Sometime in the future, when social scientists begin to write the first books about the failures of the West and the defunct American experiment, they will all confront this basic truth. Despite all the proclamations of freedom and equality, the realities of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and gross economic inequalities constantly belied these ideals. The narcissism and the racism the US and the West harbors through their blind commitment to individualism is destabilizing enough on its own to terrorize and implode nation-states. Like it or not, theAmerican Devolution, and that of the West, is already well underway.

In these allegorical essays about his hypothetical descendant Olivia, Collins engages Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism, and critical race theory to meld the serious nonfictional past and present with a speculative, nonlinear, and expansive future.

Donald Earl Collins is a contributing writer for Al Jazeera English-Opinions. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, NBC News, The Guardian, and HuffPost. He is also the author of Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004) and Boy @ The Window: A Memoir (2013).