The Funkitude: a fable is literary fiction with touches of magical realism and Afro-futurism. The time is 1977-1978. The main character, Mimi, is a deeply troubled black radical in exile from the 60s, running from a standing warrant for setting a fatal fire, hiding in plain sight in the San Joaquin Valley. The setting, near Stockton, California, is a fictionalized city, a remnant of the"sunset towns," so called because black migrants from the South in the 1940s and 1950s had to pick crops and get out of towns like Stockton and Fresno by sundown or face persecution, arrest or violence. Mimi walks all over the region, an impossible feat, one of many she does throughout the narrative. She runs into lots of black people who've lived there forever. Or so it seems. They keep saying, we've been here forever.

She discovers what this means when she runs into a wizard, whom she encounters on a hike up a mountain. He tells her about the three deaths that many black people in the valley each go through to reach a state of compassion for all humanity. She scoffs at his prophecy that she too is in the midst of fulfilling her three deaths and becoming a compassionate person. It's the people/descendants of the sunset towns who touch Mimi's heart and soul and help her become whole, i.e. whole and compassionate enough to live forever.