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6 Black Voices Redefining The Horror Genre
These groundbreaking stories center Black experiences and push horror deeper into unsettling territory.
Horror has always been a mirror to both help us see ourselves and to better see society. We use it to understand the world. To find our place, to cement our identity, to discover where we belong, and to examine our deepest fears. But for a long time, Black people weren’t able to center themselves in these stories. They were marginalized and killed off, their experiences largely ignored.
Just look at the trope ‘the Black guy dies first’. A group goes out to the woods, the Black guy dies first. Into space, same thing. Haunted house? You guessed it. It’s so common, South Park created a Black character named Token to eviscerate the tendency to put Black characters in as easy placeholders to kill off.
That’s what makes Black horror so important to the genre. To truly delve deep into what drives our fears, what makes a monster, what terrors lurk in plain sight, we have to include all perspectives into the conversation. And if we want to work towards eliminating systemic racism and heal past trauma, we have to face all the monsters as one. Here are six novels written by Black authors that will forever change how you read horror.
When twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens kicks the son of a local landowner, he is sentenced to six months at the segregated reformatory, Gracetown School for Boys. But Robbie can see ghosts. And while his sister fights for his release, Robbie learns the true horror of the school and what happens to the boys that go missing. It’s a harrowing story based in truth that will haunt you long after you close the cover.
When Korende’s sister, Ayoola, calls, she knows to drop whatever she’s doing and grab her cleaning supplies. Ayoola has a problem with defending herself against her boyfriends. And Korende is expected to help her clean up the mess. But when Ayoola aims her sights on a doctor Korende works with and is in love with, she’s torn between the two. To save the doctor is to betray her sister. And blood is always thicker than water.
In 1915, the best place to disappear was the wild expanse of Montana. So, when Adelaide accidentally kills her parents, she takes advantage of the government’s offer of free land to homesteaders, carrying nothing but her sinful secret in a large steamer trunk. But Adelaide isn’t alone on the frontier. And the sin she’s been desperately hiding, just might be the only thing that keeps her alive.
Stuck on an ark, in the middle of the sea, a group of survivors struggle to survive. Their kingdom flooded, leaving them with few resources. And worse, they are surrounded by dangerous creatures hungry for their flesh. Among them is Iraxi. Pregnant, she realizes her child might not be human. And her fate may be more horrifying than she ever imagined.
When Shori wakes up alone in the woods, she has no memory of who she is or what happened to her. But she quickly discovers that she is not like other people. She’s a genetically modified vampire with a price on her head. Butler’s prose is brutal and poetic, stripping away everything but the unflinching duality of how beautiful and horrifying human nature can truly be.
After a pandemic strikes, humanity is divided between the living and the undead. But as the plague finally slows, the living want to reclaim their lives. Top of the list of cities to rebuild is Manhattan. The military has successfully cleared Zone One, an island south of Canal Street. Mark Spitz is a civilian team assigned to help clear out pockets where some plague-infested stragglers linger. It should be a mundane assignment. But nothing is mundane in this new world. And for Mark, everything is about to go wrong.
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