La Hacienda / Isabel Cañas / 2022

La Hacienda / Isabel Cañas / 2022

Complete with a spiteful upper caste sister-in-laws, a spooky house, and an unrequited relationship with a hot priest, The Hacienda offers a robust package when it comes to historical horror. Readers will find the history of the Mexican revolution and its racial politics seamlessly knitted into the drama of Beatriz’s marriage to Don Rodolfo Solórzano, her lifesaver turned nightmare. The mystery of what plagues the house is skillfully wrought, and the only real qualm I have with the novel is that it teased vampires without really ever delivering. Cañas skillfully flips between the perspectives of a mestizo priest and curandero and Beatriz, our upper-class protagonist, who must navigate colonial patriarchy and race politics to save herself and her family from poverty. The writing feels only one strike away from literary fiction, as opposed to genre fiction. 4 out 5. 

Jawbone / Monica Ojeda / 2018

Jawbone / Monica Ojeda / 2018

A deliciously skin crawling novel about the terror of teenage private school girls. A teacher is slowly driven to madness by two separate gaggles of girls, then gets her vengeance on one after being manipulated by a teenage mastermind. I have no issue spoiling this because the way it goes down is so majestically crafted. This novel is equally philosophical as it is psychological. There’s also an indelible global south feel to this horror that is just so much more refreshing and real. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this read. 5/5 

Helpmeet / Naben Ruthnum / 2022

Helpmeet / Naben Ruthnum / 2022

What an incredible feat of feminist and disability horror.  We follow a wife as she cares for her diseased and dying husband. The disease is mysterious and horrifying as it dries out portions of his body until they crumble off. Less than 20 pages deep a nose and penis crumble off so be ready for some terrifying body horror.  The richly emotional narrative spins off troubling questions about gender and caretaking, love and betrayals, and the ending is such a shocking and stirring reveal that had Anushka and I debating its implications passionately.  I was swept away and stunned. This is why I read horror.   5/5

The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo / Uriah Derick D'Arcy / 1819

The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo / Uriah Derick D'Arcy / 1819

I read this curious about what racial insights it might have about its era and as part of my exploration of horror. It's the first vampire story from the Americas. It's mostly a tale of racial fetishism, action-packed scandal, all at a breakneck speed.  Hardly any time is spent exploring the emotional weight of the jerky narrative, which are to its credit quite saucy and eyebrow squirming.  It feels bizarrely contemporary, even with its outdated language.  Definitely only an interesting read for hobbyists and scholars.  1.5/5

Frontier / Can Xue / 2008 in Chinese / 2017 translated into English

Frontier / Can Xue / 2008 in Chinese / 2017 translated into English

Anushka and I began reading Frontier in Shantiniketan, continued it on our front porch in Chicago, and finished it over the phone while i lay sick with covid.  Frontier is a book that demands to be reread, occupying a strange place between dreamlike surrealism, dystopian literature,  and horror.  The plot devices and narrative structure that define traditional Western fiction fall flat in describing what makes Frontier so captivating.  I would frequently find myself laughing, cringing, and doubling back to track the meandering narrative.  Soon, I realized trying to understand the components and logic of the plot was actually distracting me from the moment by moment magic of the story.  It literally feels like you're in a dream, where the most insane and irrational possibilities are taken without doubt and the narrative pace can sink in for a while before suddenly snapping to other wild or strange possibilities. The only thing that raised my eyebrows was the treatment of a Black character in the book, who definitely is exoticized, which on one hand would be a realistic portrayal of the Black experience in China but on the other hand its impossible for the novel to treat very ethically bc all characters seem to lack an interiority. This isn't a psychological drama bc the reasoning of  characters is perturbed by this dream logic. Overall, the racial awkwardness contributed to the uncanny, unsettled feeling. Because narrative matters less, the book sinks into purer emotion and sensation somehow.  It's truly a marvelous strange disturbing novel that I'll twirl in my head for years in sure.  Reminded me most of Red Ants by Pergentino Jose. 4.5/5

Dracula / Bram Stoker / 1897

Dracula / Bram Stoker / 1897

An addictive novel written in the epistolary form, the language of Bram Stoker’s classic aged like fine wine, capturing the introspective intensity of the era with delightful turns of language. Like a good rollercoaster, Stoker lets you watch a character’s doom approach without sacrificing any of the delight in the story when they plunge. It provides an interesting glimpse into the racial and class biases of the era with elements that should interest folks in the medical humanities, ethnic studies, and horror fanatics alike. Stoker’s Christian overtones were a little goofy but fine. I would love to discuss with a solid feminist about the portrayal of Mena and Stoker’s intentions there, as to me the sexism of the men proves to be the greatest weakness in their strategy to defeat Dracula. The novel has the men sideline Mena, a thorough and thoughtful organizer and strategist, because she is a woman in a way that seems aware of the foolishness of the move. The novel then still plays Mena out as the ideal victim and deferent woman, even after she’s reinstated into the team by necessity. Either way, I deeply enjoyed this book. 5/5 

Frankenstein / Mary Shelley / 1818

Frankenstein / Mary Shelley / 1818

Shelley has this delightful Russian doll of a narrative style where one narrator tells the story someone else told them, who in their story will tell the story someone else told them, and so forth. The primary narrators, Captain Walton and Victor Frankstein, are remarkably like one another, both shame-ridden, earnest and ambitious men, searching for approval and success. Captain Walton’s pitiful inferiority complex and lack of worldly knowledge is as funny as it is foreboding and worrisome. It’s easy to hate Frankenstein as has such a poisonously guilt-ridden narration. The foil between these characters provides fodder for conversations about stigma, racialization, shame, and nurture vs nature. This is an absolutely curious text racially, as the monster feels like a pretty obvious stand-in for a colonized other. The plot runs pretty tight, it’s just feels incredibly stupid at times because all Frankenstein had to do was open up to the right people or really anyone and a lot of the turmoil of the conflict could’ve been resolved radically differently and better for him. I was a bit disappointed to find that the monster basically talked like a 19th century gentleman, although it was hilarious to get the scene of the monster philosophizing about the impact Paradise Lost had on the development of his consciousness. 

4/5

Carmilla / Sheridan Le Fanu / 1872

Carmilla / Sheridan Le Fanu / 1872

Glad I finally got around to this book, recommended by @screamqueersbookclub and avaliable @undertheumbrellabookstore . Sold to me as a lesbian vampire book that inspired Dracula, I was delighted in the 19th century vernacular and the spooky isolated village as the setting. Vampires always have this seductive pull that makes for particularly good tension. The tone is what makes this book, even with an excellent plot involving obscure family histories, some exorcists and gold old fashioned stakes. 4.5/5

Red Ants / Jose Pergentino / 2012

Red Ants / Jose Pergentino / 2012

Sold as Zapotec folklore written in a magical realist style but that's only one side of the story and I'm frankly it feels a little too easy to square it away another piece of Latin American magical realism. I suspect this book would find so much more of its audience if it was sold as horror because these impressionistic takes are truly horrifying and haunting. Pergentino frequently drops his readers into scenes without context, leaving us to feel around his words like feeling the the shape of a dark room with your hands. He explores the perspective of an active shooter, characters plagued by nightmares, and more in image heavy writing that reads like poetry even in English. 4/5

Temporada de huracanes / Fernanda Melchor / 2017

Temporada de huracanes / Fernanda Melchor / 2017

A novel so propulsive it's nauseating. This horror begins with the bloated body of a so called bruja showing up dead on the bank of river. The novel traces perspectives of characters around her: a sexually abused 13 year old runaway who she gives abortive medicine; two of the young men connected to her death, who engage in a frenzy of drugs, taboo sex, and petty crimes driven by poverty; the sister of one of these young men, who snitched them out. The rhythm is dangerously enchanting, the language vulgar and geniously encapsulates the idiom of Mexico, and the effect is dazzling and disgusting. It's a hard book to get through, as any book with sexual violence and torture scenes should be. A stunning work of horror and the social realities of Mexico's underbelly. I recommend it to anyone interested in horror, shifting perspectives, Mexican lit, Latin American lit, queer lit, and witchcraft. 4.5/5

Never Whistle in The Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology / edited byShane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. / 2023

Never Whistle in The Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology / edited byShane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. / 2023

I admittedly came into this anthology hoping for Stephen Graham Jones level fiction. His forward is better than most of the short stories in this uneven collection. The best stories are "The Ones Who Killed Us" by Brandon Hobson, "Sundays" by David H. W. W. , "Hunger" by Pheonix Boudreau, and "The Preppers" by Morgan Talty. At its worst, descriptions of blatant racist mistreatment attempts to pass off for horror and plot holes defeat the illusion or allure of the stories. A few even engage in a sort of stereotyping misrepresentation of their own spiritual cultures to create horror in a way that only feels inches away from a cursed native burial ground trope, something I hoped this book would save readers from. I'm surprised there's no skinwalkers mentioned. I know there might be a taboo going on here, but the Paiutes I knew could joke about skinwalkers on microphones at pow wows, so I expected horror stories to be okay. "Sundays" confronts the child sexual abuse in boarding schools with a careful, brutal story of one man's attempt at vengeance. "The Prepper" puts us in the head of an incarcerated man who narrates the intergenerational trauma, mental illness and delusion that lead him on a killing spree. "Hunger" perhaps fails in that it reduces the predatory nature of a white frat boy trope to a sort of demonic possession. The protagonist is saved by a deus ex machina essentially and it was disappointing the way a surprising amount of the these authors relied on this move. That said, it was so captivating I didn't even mind much. I expected better from Rebecca Roanhorse and Tommy Orange, but their stories were competently written. 3/5

Out There Screaming: Am Anthology of New Black Horror / Edited by Jordan Peele / 2023

Out There Screaming: Am Anthology of New Black Horror / Edited by Jordan Peele / 2023

This is a solid collection of horror with a couple misses. I know this is a hot take, but I'm still not convinced by the work of NK Jemison or Rebecca Roanhorse, whose work always feels competent but never as rigorous as the clout implies. The excellent stories in this collection include “The Aesthete” by Justin C. Key, “Invasion of the Baby Snatchers” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, “The Wandering Devil” by Cadwell Turnbull, “Dark Home” by Nnedi Okorafor, and “Your Happy Place” by Terrance Taylor. At its best, this collection imagines how technological advancements amplify the horrors of the prison industrial complex, as in Taylor's story, or the intersection of race and AI, as in Key's. The weight of intergenerational trauma and destiny is confronted, as in Okorafor and Turnbull's story. Arimah's story blew me away with its swift and terrifying worldbuilding of terrifying alien Invasion, where the lack of context didn't mess with the enjoyment at all. At its worst, the collection employs deus ex machinas and pursues blunt racial violence in a hamfisted way that definitely sucks but doesn't feel artfully horrifying. I realize I struggle with Black fiction, like Ta-Nehesi Coates’, where the author adds a magical element to Black history to explain the horror of racism or the wonder of people's resilience. I don't think it does justice to the lives lived in eras of struggle or illuminates much about their experiences. I also struggle with how authors of color rub against the magical Negro or otherwise exotic other trope in horror and fantasy, especially when actual magical and ritualistic practices in our communities are so frequently misrepresented, appropriated, and actually difficult to find authentic versions of. Even so, I was still convinced by Turnbull's story, Okorafor's story, and “The Strongest Obeah Woman in the World” by Nalo Hopkinson. This collection ends with a story analyzing the white psychology and villainization of whiteness called “Origin Story” by Tochi Onyebuchi. This story feels like it was written by a talented undergrad. Its insights into white identity development aren't that profound. It also has a snobbish experimental form as a meta-story where the characters are aware they are characters. It was a weird ass note for an anthology of Black horror to end on. This horror collection is more even footed than the last one I read though. Let's call it 3.5/5.