Memory is for the future. Can there be a bright future with dark memories of the past? Does the black of the skin entail the dark in the future too? In Toni Morrison's words, "definitions belong to the definers, not the defined," implying that the future can always be re-defined and re-modelled in newer and more interesting ways. Accordingly, this paper is an attempt to understand the presence of blackness across literary cultural production through a reading of the quintessential Black American novel, Beloved by Toni Morrison, with an interpretative approach towards the sombre narratives of young adolescent girls to acknowledge both, the underrepresentation of blackness and the over-representation of whiteness, in the works of speculative fiction of colour to contemplate on the possibility or imagination of a transformative future for the black female populace. The unconventional positioning of the novel in the speculative genre would present diverse critical insights into race thinking pertinent to black female children while simultaneously questioning the identity of the genre. Such formulation would offer to provide a reparative framework to the image of the black girl erupting out of the traumatic site and envisioning a different future that is full of possibilities, opportunities and identities.
