Read an excerpt from Janelle Monáe’s new Dirty Computer book, The Memory Librarian

polygon.com:

Sprawling, ambitious science fiction stories have been part of Janelle Monáe’s music since the beginning of her career. Her debut EP, Metropolis, and her first two albums, The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady, are all segments in a long Afrofuturist arc about a far-future android alter-ego character, Cindi Mayweather, who falls in love with a human, becomes an outlaw, and rises to messianic status. Her Grammy-nominated 2018 album Dirty Computer launches a new story, about a dystopic future where marginalized citizens — especially Black, female, and queer people — are likely to be identified as “dirty computers” and taken away to be reprogrammed by an oppressive regime.

Monáe further fleshed out Dirty Computer’s story in a 48-minute YouTube video starring Monáe as a victim of that regime, having her memories of her lovers (played by Tessa Thompson and Jayson Aaron) erased as part of her conversion to a “Torch,” a regime facilitator. The narrative expands further in the new book The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer, a collection of short stories credited to Monáe and various collaborators. In these five stories, outsider characters navigate the spread of the New Dawn regime, while a Black, queer woman named Seshet — the memory librarian of the title — tries to hold onto a position of power within New Dawn, even though she understands that she herself is at risk because of her identity.

Those questions of identity, memory, self-discovery, and the struggle to bridge multiple conflicting worlds reach throughout the stories Janelle Monáe tells in her music. They’ve been part of her film work as well, in movies like Hidden Figures and Moonlight. The five stories in Memory Librarian extend the ideas that