A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None by Kathryn Yusoff, published in 2018 by the University of Minnesota Press as part of the Forerunners: Ideas First series, is a provocative and transdisciplinary work that challenges the conventional narrative of the Anthropocene—the proposed geological epoch marked by human impact on Earth’s systems—by centering race, colonialism, and Black feminist theory. Yusoff, a Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London, argues that geology is not a neutral science but a discipline deeply complicit in the extractive economies of colonialism and slavery, which have shaped both the Earth and human subjectivity. The book, spanning just over 100 pages, critiques the universalizing concept of the Anthropocene, which often homogenizes humanity as the cause of environmental crises, erasing the disproportionate role of White colonial and capitalist practices and the racialized violence inflicted on Black and Indigenous peoples. Yusoff introduces the concept of “White Geology” to highlight how geological knowledge has historically facilitated resource extraction, dehumanization, and dispossession, particularly through the transatlantic slave trade and plantation economies. She posits that the Anthropocene’s “origin stories” must be rewritten to acknowledge “Black and brown death” as foundational to its emergence, proposing the “billion Black Anthropocenes” of the title to signify the countless erasures and extinctions of non-White lives that underpin modernity’s ecological and social order.

The book is structured as a series of interconnected essays that weave together Black feminist theory (drawing on thinkers like Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Katherine McKittrick), critical race studies, geography, and earth sciences. Yusoff argues that the Anthropocene’s proposed “golden spikes”—geological markers like the Industrial Revolution or atomic bomb testing—ignore earlier moments of violence, such as the onset of European colonialism and the slave trade in the 15th and 16th centuries, which she sees as the true genesis of global environmental disruption. For instance, she connects the extraction of gold and silver from the Americas to the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples, noting that “both slaves and gold came from the Gold Coast” (Yusoff 2018, 2). These “grammars of extraction,” “capture,” and “displacement” naturalized the commodification of both land and bodies, relegating Blackness to the category of “inhuman” or “nonbeing.” Yusoff critiques the racialized logic embedded in geological texts, such as Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which she argues implicitly supported colonial exploitation by framing matter as property. She rejects alternative terms like “Capitalocene” for focusing too narrowly on industrial capitalism, instead tracing the Anthropocene’s roots to the plantation system and colonial conquest, which marked a “natal moment” for both racialized slavery and resource extraction.

Yusoff’s vision is not merely critical but also proposes an “insurgent geology” that challenges White Geology’s erasures through a new “aesthetics of chaos” and Black poetic traditions. This approach seeks to make visible the suppressed histories of Blackness and Indigenous dispossession, advocating for a decolonial reimagining of human-Earth relations that avoids perpetuating extractive logics. The book’s transdisciplinary approach is both its strength and challenge: its dense, theoretical prose, rich with allusions to Black aesthetics and postcolonial theory, can be opaque, as noted by some Goodreads reviewers who struggled to grasp the precise meaning of “a billion Black Anthropocenes” (4.2/5 from 94 reviews). Critics like Antonio López praise its innovative linkage of geology, race, and feminism, while others note its limited engagement with practical solutions or non-Western geological traditions. Available in paperback, eBook, and free online via the University of Minnesota Press, the book is lauded for its bold intervention in Anthropocene studies, earning praise from Antipode and ISLE for its historically grounded critique, though some scholars critique its brevity and dense style as barriers to accessibility. Ultimately, Yusoff’s work demands a reckoning with the racialized foundations of environmental crises, urging a rethinking of geology as a political and ethical practice