The Dark Delight of Being Strange combines memoir, fiction, and philosophical prose with what James Haile III is calling the black speculative imagination to capture the central idea that black life is always already surreal, always already extraordinary. This fact may lend itself to appearing as if it were science fiction or fantasy, but Dark Delight will argue that the black speculative imagination is far from these. It will be argued instead, in both form and content, instead of taking us to another world or another time (as with much science fiction/fantasy), the black speculative imagination leaves us squarely in our world and time to reveal to us the extraordinary or surreal in the mundane or everyday of black life. 

Dark Delight is an attempt to think the meaning of black freedom in the wake of enslavement, colonialism, and in the condition of anti-blackness. How have black people resisted these? What counter-narratives have black provided? What tools do we have to gain access to these counter-narratives and the parallel worlds of black freedom? Dark Delight challenges us to mine the black speculative imagination to rethink contemporary and historical black life, and approaches to freedom/liberty outside of Euromodernity in order to demonstrate the multidimensionality of black life, but also the avant-garde aesthetic expressions critical to black political thinking. Haile’s book will be coming out with Columbia University Press.