Formerly CIP Uk. - Includes bibliographical references and index. - Introduction: White genres, Black traditions? Anansi, Peter Parker, and other tropes -- The meaning of the past? allegory in Octavia E. Butler's Wild seed (1980) -- Traveling through time: vampire fiction and the Black Atlantic in Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda stories (1991) -- Dystopian future and utopian vision: surviving apocalypse in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the sower (1993) -- A better future? ambiguity, cyberpunk, and Caribbean syncretism in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight robber (2000) -- Conclusion