 |
| Credit: Pixabay |
I apologise for not posting last weekend. I was going through a stressful week which gave me a writer’s block. But after taking some time off, I’m now back on track.
February is Black History Month, when we in the US honor and celebrate the great achievements African-Americans have made through the centuries. It’s also a time to make ourselves more aware of these achievements and how they’ve contributed to society in our nation. Many of these include the horror fiction of Black authors which are important to acknowledge because, for far too long, people of colour have been left out of the history of horror in the US. Many of us who are fans of the genre like to be scared. We like to see characters that we care about and can identify with in threatening situations that we normally wouldn't want to be in. This desire to be scared for entertainment is common among people of all races and cultures. However, horror fiction has mostly been written by white authors. Traditionally authors have reflected the fears of white society and so through white characters’ eyes. Although much horror fiction reflects the basic fears of humanity regardless of colour or cultural background, it does so through white protagonists. The same goes true for horror films.
Yet, horror cinema has been a little more open to using people of colour as main characters. Beginning in the 1970s, the Blaxploitation film movement, which consisted of movies that starred black characters and portrayed African-American culture and issues, included horror films such as Blackula (about a Black man who is bitten by Count Dracula and becomes a vampire himself) and Sugar Hill (about a woman who turns to voodoo to avenge her boyfriend’s murder). But, for the most part, horror films have been about white people and their fears represented by monsters and serial killers.
So, for a long time there has been a need for African-American artists to share through the horror genre their own culture and the issues they have faced, the main issue being racism. They've needed inclusion to tell their stories using their own ancestral myths and, by utilizing the metaphor of the monster, communicate to the world the terror and death brought by racism. In fiction, they are doing this now more than ever. This trend in horror is the literary version of Blaxploitation horror cinema, only the quality of many of the works go far beyond that of 1970s B-rated movies that were popular with both minorities of colour and white society. Following is a list of five of the best horror fiction books by African-American authors that you may want to consider reading during this Black History Month as well as throughout the year.
List of 5 of the Best Horror Fiction Books by Black Authors
1. “The Between”, Tananarive Due (1996): Hilton must defend himself and his family who are stalked by a psychotic racist and a terrifying force from his nightmares.
2. “Fledgling”, Octavia Butler (2005): A girl discovers that she is really a 53-year-old vampire.
3. “The Ballad of Black Tom”, Victor LaValle (2016): Charles Thomas Tester takes a book of the occult to a Queens sorceress which results in the opening of a door to a menacing force.
4. “Ring Shout”, Djeli Clark (2020): A group of resistance fighters must fight off demons that assist the Ku Klux Klan.
5. “No Gods, No Monsters”, Cadwell Turnbull (2021): Monsters appear in Boston causing the disappearances of people, suicides, rising hate crimes, and global protests.
Are you reading any of the above books or others to celebrate and honor Black History Month?
Until next time . . .
No surprise Octavia Butler is on that list.
ReplyDeleteIt may not have been complete without her, although she was more science fiction than horror. I just kind of picked these through best-sellers and and critical appraised comments.
Delete