Where It Rains in Color

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About the book:

Lileala has just been named the Rare Indigo - beauty among beauties - and is about to embrace her stardom, until something threatens to change her whole lifestyle and turn the planet of Swazembi upside down. --

Colonized by the descendants of Earth's West African Dogon Tribe, the planet of Swazembi is a blazing, color-rich utopia and famous vacation center of the galaxy. No one is used to serious trouble in this idyllic, peace-loving world, least of all the Rare Indigo.

But Lileala's perfect, pampered lifestyle is about to be shattered. The unthinkable happens and her glorious midnight skin becomes infected with a mysterious disease. Where her skin should glisten like diamonds mixed with coal, instead it scabs and scars. On top of that, she starts to hear voices in her head, and everything around her becomes confusing and frightening.

Lileala's destiny, however, goes far beyond her beauty. While searching for a cure, she stumbles upon something much more valuable. A new power awakens inside her, and she realizes her whole life, and the galaxy with it, is about to change...

About the author:

Denise Crittendon's Afrofuturist sci-fi /fantasy novel, Where it Rains in Color, earned an Indie Author Project Award for the State of Nevada and a 2023 "Outstanding Book Award" from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). A veteran journalist, Crittendon is a former staff writer for The Detroit News and the Kansas City Star, and a past editor-in-chief of the NAACP's national magazine, The Crisis. In 1999, she became founding editor of African American Family Magazine where she worked until 2008. As a motivational speaker and author of self-help manuals for teens, Crittendon was named "One of the Most Influential Black Women in Metro Detroit" by the Women's Informal Network. Among other honors, she was presented the "Life Directions -- Mary Ball Children's Advocacy Award." Her various works include Millionaire Moves: Seven Proven Principles of Entrepreneurship, co-authored with business mogul, William Pickard. These days, she prefers to conjure up fictitious worlds that glorify the Black Aesthetic and offer bold new depictions of the African diaspora. She divides her time between her hometown, Detroit, and Spring Valley, Nevada.

About the presentation:

AN AFROFUTURIST LOOK AT BLACK FEMALE EMPOWERMENT,” Denise Crittendon will explore beauty as a social construct and discuss the need to shift the narrative for women of color (whom she defines as women of the global majority). She will highlight the wisdom of The Motherland, including insights from the Dogon Tribe of West Africa as she examines the role sci-fi plays in preserving the Black Aesthetic and using it to envision a better world for people of African descent.