If superstar historian Isabel Wilkerson wrote a Hollywood summer blockbuster, it might look something like The Record Keeper. In her debut novel, Agnes Gomillion creates a future world that feels simultaneously dystopian and familiar. Heroine Arika Cobane emerges as the prophesied savior after she discovers her world’s violent history of racial oppression.

Anges Gomillion hopes her debut novel will help foster a national examination of America’s history of slavery. A former lawyer, Agnes uses fiction to shed light on the origins of racial disparities in wealth, education, and criminal justice. She credits Frederick Douglass with inspiring her to explore the journey from bondage to enlightenment.

The Record Keeper portrays an elaborately detailed, fully realized universe. Had you imagined the whole world before you started writing? 

When I started writing I knew that my heroine, Arika, would try to free herself from slavery. The other parts of her world formed around the interplay between that first plot point and Arika’s character. Starting with a character that attempts to flee captivity, I had to ask myself why she doesn’t succeed. The answer is that her enslavement is mental and emotional. It follows her wherever she goes.

This book felt like the beginning of an epic journey. Are you planning a long series? What’s the elevator pitch for the Hollywood version? 

If freedom is the physical overthrowing of tyranny then, yes, The Record Keeper will feel like the beginning of an epic journey. But, if freedom is overcoming fear and discovering a passion worth dying for, then the conclusion will feel like the end of the most epic journey any of us can take.

I have definite plans for one more book in this series. I’m still very curious about Arika, her world, and the definition of freedom. In an elevator ride, I’d pitch The Record Keeper as the story of a young woman who frees her people from slavery in the post-apocalyptic American South.

Afrofuturist artists and thinkers emerged in the 1990s. Do you think that the success of Black Panther is a tribute to this movement? 

Afrofuturism, the term, was coined in the 90s, but the concept is as old as American chattel slavery. As early as the 1930s, Sun Ra, an early pioneer of the movement, used jazz to tap into the power of Afrofuturism. Through his music, his audiences experienced the greatness of life in outer space, despite the realities of the Depression Era. The jazz music Sun Ra utilized can be traced to work songs American slaves chanted to elevate the mind and emotion to transcend an oppressed existence.

In my view, Black Panther is a continuation of this very old tendency of African-Americans to protest their hateful reality by imagining their ideals. Specifically, Black Panther protests the American narrative regarding the continent of Africa. The persistent narrative says Africa is poor, pitiable and backward. Black Panther upends that narrative with images of Wakanda, a prosperous, enviable and advanced African nation.

How can Afrofuturist novels like The Record Keeper create a pathway for positive change? 

Afrofuturistic art can be a blueprint of the future. More, and this is often overlooked in the excitement of cool futuristic aesthetics, Afrofuturism can help us understand our racial past. 
In The Record Keeper, the reader encounters a future world that bears a strong resemblance to both the antebellum south and present-day America. By juxtaposing the past and present, I expose how similar the two eras really are. 

As an artist, do you think about how your work will shape a young reader’s sense of future possibility? 

I think about it often. In my entrance essay to law school, I wrote about wanting to defend innocent children accused of crimes. I left legal practice when I became convinced that stories can do more to defend innocent children than defense lawyers can. By the time a child is in the courtroom, their self-narrative, which is the most important narrative, is already largely solidified. The Record Keeper – which challenges social narratives and classifications – speaks directly to my life calling of shaping young people who are vulnerable and accused.

The leading character transforms from a historian into a warrior. In this post-apocalyptic world, can Arika’s battle lead to a final peace? 

Arika is able to see past the lies she’s been told about her world’s history. She is overcome with righteous anger, fueling her transformation into a warrior bent on ending the regime that enslaves her people. In my view, anger is a natural and necessary reaction to an honest examination of slavery. Those who skip over anger or refuse to fully accept the truth will fail to bring about final peace or true freedom.

When the novel opens, Arika believes that racial strife is a past phenomenon and that her society has achieved peace. As her journey progresses, she realizes that, while her society isn’t plagued by the bloody race battles of old, the pyrrhic peace they operate under is just as violent.

Central to The Record Keeper is the theme lost memory. Do you think our memories are wiped away faster now in the Internet age? 

When the First Lady’s haircut is announced in the same segment as a Supreme Court immigration ruling, the public’s understanding of newsworthiness is degraded. Truly worthy information is easily forgotten in the morass. It’s a problem! A more systemic problem is the limited viewpoint from which the majority of our historical literature is written. 

History books written by and about African-Americans are rare. Even where they exist, they’re hard to access. The result is that African-American viewpoints don’t strongly influence the public’s understanding of history. When history is largely viewed through the lens of one race, key facets are lost to our collective memory.