Description

Told in the second person, and set against the back drop of climate collapse and white hubris, Ezra Claytan Daniels’ short story, Pressure places its reader in the role of the only black member of a white family in a small town. In the near future erratic and violent weather has become commonplace, and you are an emerging artist, visiting your small hometown, reuniting with your two cousins. One works for a non-profit to help displaced climate refugees, the other works for a start-up whose goal to combat the effects of a devolving environment with the same sort of technology that brought the climate to this point. You are in town to support the culmination and launch of the latter’s efforts.

Ezra stitches together moments, from deliberate racism, to unconscious microagressions to express the racial otherness felt by your character. As an emotional pressure steadily simmers, physical pressure builds in this subtle and nuanced short science fiction story.

Another short science fiction tale, this time a comic, We Are Not Alone backs up Ezra’s prose. A clever and quick exploration of anthropocentrism, We Are Not Alone was originally published on Homeroom’s Instagram. Now you can enjoy this entertaining story in print!