An energized Wellesley audience greeted Janelle Monáe, 10-time Grammy nominated musician, actor, and author, with thunderous applause and shouts of joy when she entered the stage at Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall on November 22. Monáe took a few moments to return the greeting before wiping away a tear. “Thank you guys so much for showing up tonight and looking incredible in black and white,” she said. “My heart is so full.”
Monáe, who uses she/her and they/them pronouns, sat down to talk with Nikki Greene, associate professor of art at Wellesley and specialist in African and African American performance art, music, and identity. Their discussion marked the spotlight event of the semester from the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a focus on “radical futures.”
Ashadé Altine ’25, who attended the event, said she believes “there’s this idea of what the future is going to be and should be, based on the way that society has been going. [You can] imagine it as a linear curve on a graph. To me, radical futures means completely turning that graph on its heels … completely shifting from what that preconceived notion of what the future is should be and is going to be.” Monáe’s work, in the eyes of students such as Altine and many others, subverts our presumptions about the future and asks us to imagine a world founded on radical principles.
Greene kicked off the conversation with a reflection on the history of the Afrofuturist tradition, which Monáe has contributed to, then asked Monáe about the beginning of their journey as a multiplatform artist.
“I think sometimes—I’ll speak for myself—I can forget some of the things that I’ve done, and can forget the past because I’m so future-forward,” Monáe began. “So it’s always a blessing to have historians, folks like yourself, that really do the research, pay attention to the details, and understand how we’re connected and also the nuances that make us different. Thank you for seeing me.”
Monáe discussed the origins of her career and identity as an artist, describing how she sees herself primarily as a “world-builder” and how each of the worlds she has created through her albums—including Metropolis: The Chase Suite (2008), The ArchAndroid (2010), and The Electric Lady (2013)—are deeply intertwined. Cindi Mayweather, Monáe’s alter ego and the main character in several of their albums, is the key figure that binds their work together. Cindi is an android in the distant future who falls in love with a human, and is thus sentenced to disassembly. While on the run, she becomes a symbol of resistance and finds community in surprising places.
“I think art protects us … Cindi Mayweather has been my protector, and also my inspiration and something to aspire to,” Monáe said. “I wanted Cindi to be a uniter between the haves and the have-nots, the rich, the poor. I wanted her to represent love, to represent the heart … Cindi represents what we are at our best when we use technology for good, for unity.”
Monáe’s family has been a critical force in shaping the perspectives that have defined her work, including her iconic black-and-white uniform, which she wears to honor her grandmother and her parents, all of whom served their community and wore uniforms for their jobs.
“Because I grew up with 49 first cousins, I was taught to take care of them, they were taught to take care of me,” they said. “Whoever was there, we pitched in. … I’m so happy that I grew up serving. I think that it’s always stuck with me.”
“I get most fulfilled when I’m around community,” they continued. “I’m better as an artist, as a thinker, because I’m being challenged, I’m being inspired.”
Greene and Monáe also talked about Monáe’s debut collection of short stories, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (2022). Written in collaboration with a group of co-authors, the book is one of Monáe’s “proudest offerings.” It expands on the world of Dirty Computer (2018), their third studio album, and focuses on “memory cleansing.” In this world, a totalitarian society steals people’s memories, leaving each individual a shell of their former self. In some ways, Monáe said, this scenario is not so far-fetched considering some troubling developments today, such as the weaponization of technologies and the book bans spreading across the United States.
“We need writers. We need visionaries. We need people writing, being unafraid to tell the truth, and being unafraid to remember,” she said. “That’s what The Memory Librarian is about—who gets to control our memories and what we remember.”
The collection also deals with a topic Monáe calls “time poverty,” referring to the experience of simply not having enough time to exist beyond the work one needs to do to survive—an experience she noted is shared by marginalized people all over the world. “What does it mean when you actually get time back?” she asked. “How do you spend it? Do you share it with the rest of the community, or … do you hoard that time?”
During the pandemic, Monáe found herself connecting the concept of time poverty to the need for rest and rejuvenation, which became the focus of her latest album, The Age of Pleasure (2023).
“My ancestors lost time because they were forced to be laborers. They were forced to birth children that they didn’t want to birth. … Their bodies were controlled. They had no autonomy over their lives,” they said. “I asked myself … What does it look like for us to be free of those things? And then The Age of Pleasure was born, which was strictly about seeing the communities that don’t often get to celebrate themselves peacefully, the communities that don’t feel safe. What does that look like, seeing us in joy, seeing us in pleasure, seeing us feel safe?”
These questions and more have guided Monáe as they build their own unique vision of an emancipatory future for marginalized people everywhere—a vision in which technology plays a key role. Teesta Kasargod ’25 was moved by how Monáe talked about the ways technology has been used to spread disinformation and lies. “In reality, we can use [technology] to uplift one another because it also allows us to find the good in humanity’s progress,” Kasargod said. In their albums, films, and short stories, Monáe’s radical futurism offers new ways of conceptualizing technology, liberation, and autonomy and electrifies her audiences everywhere, including the Wellesley College community.