Apocalypse Still - by Leah Nicole Whitcomb (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A dark yet heartwarming collection perfect for fans of Deesha Philyaw, Tracy Deonn, and Octavia Butler.

What happens when the world is ending, but society wants to move on and ignore it? Apocalypse Still explores the fears, rage, and hopes of Black women and girls who must address the defeating circumstances of their apocalyptic worlds. In these ten earth-shattering scenarios, young Black women question how to survive, what they believe, and who to trust.

In a future where Black people have superpowers, superhero Naomi wrestles against a newer iteration of America's oldest foe. Paranoid Jenise realizes that the government may be lying about the zombie virus. When society collapses, Gada infiltrates a secret organization in search of food but bites off more than she can chew. Kiana's kink helps her time travel between lovers. Trying to understand the truth of her disability, Monice uncovers an alien conspiracy.

This debut collection weaves the grotesque and the beautiful, the extraordinary and the mundane together in these tender tales of community, ancestral gifts, and the lengths we go through to survive.

Review Quotes

"Leah Nicole Whitcomb has written a collection that speaks beautifully to ideas about how gender, identity, and care evolve in the ruins, and how storytelling helps us name what survives after everything collapses.

In her debut collection, Apocalypse Still, Leah redefines what apocalypse means. Instead of a singular catastrophic event where the world ends, Leah's book describes apocalypse as the condition of trying to live through what's considered "the end." The stories center the experiences of Black girls and women as they navigate both what's fantastical and what's familiar to the reader. This includes zombies and pandemics, but also grief, survival, and communal care. In her stories, apocalypse isn't just an event, but a condition. It's racial, familial, environmental, intimate, and ongoing.

Her work combines the kind of speculative imagining we expect from apocalyptic narratives with the familiar elements of everyday life, making the collection particularly thought-provoking about our world, its present, and its future. Through this collection, Leah reminds us that storytelling itself is a survival strategy and that creativity, connection, and care are each equally valid ways of existing and hoping, even at the end of the world." - Dr. Khaliah Reed, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Professor