I want to thank my parents Jane and Jerry Brown, who never balked when I declared myself a writer. Mom thank you for the gentle laughter and “of course” every time I remembered I needed to write fiction. Thank you to my sisters April and Autumn, both gifted writers, who have flanked me such that I could find and be myself. Thank you Detroit, especially the Black liberation and food justice movements, especially the Allied Media Projects crew, for showing me how we envision a post-capitalist future. Thank you Ill Weaver and Jenny Lee and Detroit Summer for bringing me to Detroit. Thank you Grace Lee Boggs, Charity Hicks, David Blair, Sheddy and my other Detroit ancestors for the love and lessons. Thank you Tananarive Due, the inaugural VONA Speculative Fiction Class and the Clarion Writers Workshop for giving feedback on early versions of this work. Thank you Janine de Novais, Dani McClain, Jodie Tonita, Sofia Santana, Shane Jones, my goddesses and inner circle for repeatedly affirming my fiction heart. Thank you Sage Crump and Mia Herndon for letting me be me and still belong. Thank you Sofia, Bernie Cox, Evan Mallon, Bobby Bermea, and Tchaiko Omawale for deep reading and feedback and continuing to ask me about the work. Alexis de Veaux thank you deeply for the feedback I needed to finish. Thank you AK Press for years of positive writing experiences and for connecting me with Black Dawn, and thank you Sanina Clark for trusting that this could be the launch of the imprint, for saying the magic words “novella trilogy.” And finally, thank you to my fiancé Nalo Zidan for the big romance that creates a soft place for moving all this grief through.

Copyright

BLACK DAWN SERIES #1

sanina l. clark, series editor

Copyright 2021 by adrienne maree brown

This edition copyright 2021, AK Press (Chico / Edinburgh)

ISBN 9781849354523

E-ISBN 9781849354530

LCCN: 2021935967

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

AK Press

370 Ryan Ave. #100

Chico, CA 95973

AK Press

33 Tower Street

Edinburgh, Scotland EH6 7BN

akuk.com

Cover design and logo by T. L. Simons, tlsimons.com

Printed in the USA.

Friends of AK Press

ak press is small, in terms of staff and resources, but we also manage to be one of the world’s most productive anarchist publishing houses. We publish close to twenty books every year, and distribute thousands of other titles published by like-minded independent presses and projects from around the globe. We’re entirely worker-run and demo­cratically managed. We operate without a corporate structure—no boss, no managers, no bullshit.