“There Be Dragons… Awashed in the New World”

This chapter examines leading Black authors and performing artists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from W.E.B. Du Bois to 2 Live Crew, who employ draconic imagery to convey the complexity of their suppressed creativity. In so doing, these authors reclaim the dragon, as indigenous to Africa as it is to Europe, from the narrow image of white European terror into a utopian vision of liberated genius. By transforming the European warning of “Here Be Dragons” into the battle cry of “We Be Dragons,” the monster in this vision remains a warning signal, but in a racist society that can only understand non-whiteness as monstrosity, these authors use the dragon to signal their own dangerous (to the racist hegemony) brilliance and artistry—brilliance and artistry hitherto inexpressible and unrecognized.