Why Wakanda Matters: What Black Panther Reveals About Psychology, Identity, and Communication

Filmmaker Howard (Encyclopedia of Black Comics) brings together 14 essays that consider the “cultural-historical impact” of the 2018 film Black Panther in this well-crafted anthology. Howard organizes the essays into four sections covering collective identity, racial identity, intergenerational trauma, and “cognition and identification.” In “Wakanda, Pan Afrikanism, and the Afrikana Worldview,” Olísa Yaa Tolókun and Aynda Mariama Kanyama-Jackson write: “When we watch Black Panther, we see our spirituality, our sense of style, and our symbolism,” and detail how Black Panther reflects a common aspect of “Afrikana spiritual traditions” and ancestral reverence. “N’Jadaka and Intergenerational Trauma” by Olísa Yaa Tolókun explains that the film’s antagonist “identifies with the trauma that his ancestors have suffered.” Though most of the essays praise the film, Howard also includes critics— Charles Athanasopoulos argues, in “Black Radical Thought as Pathology in Black Panther,” that it “promotes political ideas that ultimately reinforce white supremacist and anti-Black logics that are at the root of our youth’s experience of racial battle fatigue.” The essays, a well-balanced combination of contemporary thought and historical analysis, will leave readers eager for another viewing. (Feb.)