Film Review: Slanted

A microcosm of race and gender that wanted to be far more daring than it is

Slanted is a film about identity. It is about Chinese-American identity inflected through the turmoil of finding yourself in your teenage years. It is about how America demands a very specific roster of traits to consider you truly included, and the most obvious of those is white skin. Through its history, America has demanded outsiders mold themselves to the white nationalist mold, and brutally punishes those outside it. This film is about one fantastical way of trying to transcend that dissonance, and the cost of becoming “American.”

Joan Huang is a Chinese-American student at a high school right out of the movies, with all the cliques and drama and entanglements we have been conditioned to accept. She is one of the few people of color at this affluent lily-white school that highly values conformity and submission, especially from its girls. Joan spends too much time on social media, and particularly is obsessed with a filter on one of said apps that makes her look white. As the culture of capitalism swoops down, she is offered the chance of a lifetime: a new experimental surgery that will turn her into a white girl. She uses this new procedure to seek the holy grail of teenage girlhood, according to Hollywood: the coveted status of prom queen.

Note that “according to Hollywood” bit in the last paragraph. This film is very much in thrall to the Hollywood genre of the “teen film”: high school is divided into mutually exclusive cliques, everyone is in a dog-eat-dog contest for popularity, everyone is seeking love and sex constantly as opposed to decent grades, and nobody can think about anything else. For example, Joan spends much of the film seeking the heart of a white boy at her school, who was tragically born without a personality, as part of her quest to join a clique that likewise has no personality. The film feels like, for no reason at all, it has a special obligation to a hackneyed formula that is already decades out of date and has been since subverted (I think that Spiderman: Homecoming was the closest film to my experience in high school in the early 2010s, for example).

The most striking example of this dated feeling is a scene where Joan is conveying her half-thought plan to become prom queen to her closest friend at school, using sheets of paper in a binder. I watched this film with my younger sister, who graduated high school in 2019, and she found the notion that this would be done on paper, rather than in a social media app, to be completely unbelievable.

Nor is the traditional “teen movie” the only genre to which this film pledges fealty. The other is the “immigrant movie,” where your unfortunate protagonist’s lunch, packed by her hardworking mother, immediately provokes disgust in her peers because it dares have a spice stronger than mayonnaise. Her parents are hard-working recent immigrants, stuck in menial labor and at the whim of rich white people. She speaks mostly in English, while her parents speak mostly in Chinese, but each understands the other language well enough. Her journey is that of what Northrop Frye defined as comedy, one where a character is ultimately reconciled with her society. At the end, she learns to be American, a newly accepted part of the nation of immigrants.

The film, though, never bothers to actually interrogate any of these notions that the narrative takes for granted, and the end result is a feeling of tonal dissonance. On the one hand, the way most characters behave is, if not “realistic,” normal enough according to Hollywood, all within the standard genre of the “teen film” and therefore part of what Hollywood considers to be “reality;” it is enough of a simulacrum of immigrant life that you can shrug and say “good enough.” But so many accoutrements of the setting, particularly her school, are exaggerated enough to feel like an inaccuracy, but not enough to feel like commentary. The school’s mascot is the wizard, and the posters for said wizard look unsubtly like a Klansman when viewed out of focus. The significance of prom is enshrined to the point that portraits of prom kings and queens past line a hallway, implying that the significance of this ritual is honored by the school administration too. The group of white kids that Joan is trying to fit into does a number of its routines completely in unison, such as when they take out their inevitably identical lunches from their packs. You have characterization that is totally at odds with worldbuilding.

The result of this is a film that feels like a machine-generated average of two other hypothetical, better films. One of them is a searing look at the insidious nature of everyday racism, where the smiling faces of Joan’s peers hide the fact they will never view her as one of them. This one would be very grounded, tragically real, with the race-changing surgery as the only speculative element, where the cost of assimilation is made viscerally real. The other hypothetical film is wilder, more exaggerated, going down past the point where One Battle After Another was with its Bedford Forrest Medal of Honor, and down to the far lands of satire where a school with a Klansman as a mascot feels earned. This hypothetical film would be biting, irreverent, and dystopian; it could have cross-burnings in the football field, lynchings conducted over Tik-Tok, and the prom queen receive the honor of being marshal at a Klan parade; in other words, it’d have to go all the way with the exaggeration or it would fall flat. Either option would be a film that would dare to say something: Is striving to be “American” worth pursuing to begin with?

The traditional immigrant story in the United States, where the newcomer passes through trials and tribulations and ultimately ends up a new American, is wrapped up in the “nation of immigrants” propaganda line that became common in this country after World War II as a reaction to the wave of decolonization sweeping the world. It was becoming clearer and clearer that Europeans had never had a right to rule Africa or Asia, and this of course raised questions about the white man’s right to rule the Americas. The response concocted was to portray this country as a land of opportunity for people from all around the world. The idea was that America’s strength came through its diversity and tolerance, and that all the anti-immigrant riots and massacres and poverty was simply human beings failing to live up to a quasi-divine ideal.

As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has shown in her book Not “a Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (excerpted here), the “nation of immigrants” line is based on a fundamental conflation between a settler and an immigrant. The settler caste of white people came to this continent to plunder and kill so they could create a white nationalist ethnostate where they would rule forever as overlords. European immigrants, often called “white ethnics,” could to a point assimilate into the settler caste (the most precariously placed being Jewish immigrants). Those from darker countries, on the other hand, are only allowed into the country at white allowance, and will (and do) face shockingly brutal violence if they ever step out of line, or are seen as a useful scapegoat. If America were truly a “nation of immigrants,” truly a “land of opportunity,” truly “tolerant” and “accepting” and “diverse,” it would not be murdering Palestinian children on a whim in Illinois, or throwing Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in concentration camps where they are tortured. No amount of self-soothing pablum can deny the fact that America has never been tolerant of immigrants, and has never viewed them as anything other than cheap labor. The “nation of immigrants” line is fundamentally a way for affluent white people to justify slavery and genocide as a price worth paying for cheap takeout.

I am a Filipino-American, and through this film I was reminded of a bit in Dylan Rodríguez’s nonfiction book Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition, where he argues that the idea of “Filipino-Americans” as a people is a contradiction in terms. America has historically hated Filipinos, never accepting them, indeed willing to slaughter them like cattle, as Samar and Bud Dajo and Watsonville attest. Rodríguez is in the same school of a number of critical ethnic studies theorists who argue that America’s demands for assimilation are of a fundamentally genocidal nature, not necessarily through killing but through a mechanism similar to an Indian residential school. In Slanted, America, through Joan’s classmates, sees a character like her and wants to “kill the Asian and save the girl.” This line of theory, however, overlooks the existence of half-Filipinos like me (“tisoy” in Tagalog, derived from Spanish “mestizo”), who cannot just abandon America even if we wanted to. Back to Slanted, just by growing up in America, absorbing its individualism and its enterprise and its optimism, Joan has become something other than purely Chinese, but will still never be fully American. This is a dissonance, the type of chasm that Rodríguez failed to consider and the film never bothers to reckon with.

The film is ultimately unsatisfying because it is so wedded to genre conventions that rest on shaky assumptions, and never questions any of them. Joan is railroaded down a particular path of acceptance and is not given a chance to see that said “acceptance” is not worth pursuing. Sure, by the end she sees that the surgery was not worth the cost, but she is still buying into the myth that she can be accepted into the American white nationalist project. She still views acceptance into the echelons of the “popular crowd” at a school with a logo suspiciously resembling a Klansman as a worthy goal.

The film most clearly fumbles this with a side character, Brindha, an Indian-American (played by Canadian actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) who is Joan’s best friend and who goes along with her plan to become prom queen, but is clearly not buying into the whole charade in the way that Joan is. There’s a piercing scene after Joan has become whitened, where to gain acceptance from her white peers she rejects Brindha from a gathering. This scene vaguely gestures towards the “model minority” placement of East Asians as occupying a somewhat higher rung on the racial ladder than darker-skinned minorities, but never commits to it. The film is not interested in interrogating this notion, and represents no real alternative when doing so could have led to a far more compelling arc.

There is one place in the film that does have some depth, although not terribly much—that of predatory capitalism. The way that the whitening surgery is pitched to Joan is through an app with a filter that makes her look white on social media, and is done with a great sense of false urgency. The surgery, then, is ultimately a scam, as is omnipresent today to the point it has overwhelmed telephone calls. This more than gestures at the way predatory capitalism harms teenagers through social media, and specifically teenage girls. Indeed the gendered aspect of all this is the film’s strongest aspect. Take, for example, the hall of prom kings and queens; Joan is ultimately aspiring to be a picture among pictures, an object among objects, something to be admired and not respected. She is chasing white beauty standards to be a more desirable thing in the eyes of American patriarchy, as that is how it values its women (and the standards have broken out of containment, as skin whitening is common in Asia). Much of this wasn’t clear to me until talking about it with my sister at length, but this story would unquestionably not be what it is if the protagonist were instead a teenage boy. What becomes frustrating, though, is that so much of this plot could be told with a white girl and more regular plastic surgery. Sure, not every story with a nonwhite protagonist needs to be about race issues, but the film clearly wanted to be about race issues in addition to gender issues. Once again, the film gestures in a certain direction, but never actually treads that path.

The film doesn’t want to critique Joan’s reasons for wanting what she does, particularly the ones she isn’t necessarily aware of. Joan is subjected to a particularly gendered form of racial capitalism, where her value can only be expressed through the ways an Asian woman could be valued according to white nationalist standards. These are the standards that, while appearing trifling in a high school context, are the things that will press on her adult life from all directions. Her school life is a preparation for her adult life and she is being prepared for a particular role. Ideally, we’d get something like the portrayal of racial capitalism in 2025’s Him, which I have reviewed for this blog previously.

Ultimately, I am conflicted about this film, and frankly am unsure if I was the right person to review it, as I have not experienced its gendered issues. To me, Slanted acts like it wants to deconstruct genres, but doesn’t dare to dig under the surface. It still accepts the liberal idea of immigrant assimilation as fact, and views the ‘80s template of high school films as the only way teenagers could ever possibly live. It interrogates gender rather well, but only glances at race when race and gender are so intertwined. Ultimately, the critical project of the film feels incomplete. I left this film with a sense of wasted potential, of a daring film that could have been rather than the timid film that is. Both my sister and I agreed that this would have been better off as an A24 film, for it would feel less need to be commercial. In any case, Slanted simply does not think big enough about its subject matter to be a truly satisfying film.

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Review: The Book of Clarence

A unique, irreverent, genre-mixing dark comedy wrapped around deep messages on race and class

The theatrical trailer for The Book of Clarence left me feeling confused and a little uneasy about seeing the film. Was it an alternate history, a comedy, a parody, a tragic epic drama? Was it an allegorical Black social commentary, fantasy/sci-fi, religious, anti-religious? After seeing the film, the answer to all of these questions is: yes. There was so much going on in this story. The quirky presentation style is so unique that it’s hard to know who the target audience is. But sometimes weird is good.

The story is set during the last year of the life of Jesus. Yes, the Jesus. Jesus is a popular local celebrity in the area (due to his legendary miracles) but initially he remains mostly offscreen and is barricaded by an entourage of disciples. Clarence is a local hustler, but with a good heart. He gambles, sells drugs, drag-races chariots, and takes care of his ailing/aging mother. When his ill-gotten debts catch up to him and the local mobster threatens to kill him, Clarence hatches a scheme to make money by taking advantage of Jesus’s popularity as the Messiah. At first he tries to join the disciples but is immediately rejected by them, including his twin brother Thomas (yes, the famous doubting Thomas) so Clarence is prevented from any access to Jesus. Then he gets a better idea. He decides to con people into believing he is a miracle worker to get money.  Clarence enlists his best friend Elijah and recently freed fighter Barabbas to help with the scheme. But things take a turn when the occupying Roman military catches up with Clarence leading to an unexpected encounter with the real Jesus. The additional twist in this film is that, other than the occupying Romans, every character is Black.

The film is initially a parody of classic Bible epics such as Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments, using ironically epic background music, dramatic chariot races, and even 1960s-style gold-framed title pages in between the major acts of the story. On the other hand, it is also fantastical. The drugs Clarence smokes with his friends cause them to temporarily float in the air with their bodies turning and spinning, gravity-free. When Clarence gets an idea, it materializes as an actual light above his head. The fantastical special effects are a surreal juxtaposition against the retro epic vibe.

At first, the feel of the film is epic and historical but also slightly comical/absurd. However, the film eventually dives into the true nature of belief, loyalty, and morality. Although the people in his community have a range of spiritual beliefs, particularly as it relates to the Messiah, Clarence seems to be the only one who doesn’t believe in any form of God or spirituality. However, he is willing to use the existing belief systems to achieve his goals by being a con artist and pretending to be an alternate Messiah. In a dual role, LaKeith Stanfield plays both Clarence and Clarence’s twin brother, Thomas the apostle, who has abandoned everything, including their ailing mother, to follow Jesus. Thomas despises Clarence’s petty criminal behavior, even as Clarence has devoted himself to caring for their mother. Thus we have the set-up of religious piety versus cynical pragmatism that permeates the film.

The best character in the film is Clarence’s best friend/sidekick Elijah. Elijah is open-minded about his beliefs, but also comfortable running scams and being loyal to Clarence and their bestie, chariot racer Mary Magdalene. In a pivotal scene, Mary Magdalene has been accused of adultery and chained to a wall to be brutally stoned to death. Elijah intervenes to protect her, risking his own death, but he cannot free her from the chain. Clarence is nowhere around and death seems imminent for Mary and Elijah until the real-deal Messiah shows up in a quietly jaw-dropping, Marvel-worthy scene.

The set design and costumes of the film are outstanding, making you feel transported to the ancient Jerusalem setting that has been reimagined for the story. The film also benefits from a strong cast reinterpreting classic characters, including Mary, the Mother of Jesus (hilariously played by Alfre Woodard), John the Baptist (David Oyelowo), and an irritable Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy). We also get quirky new characters played by Babs Olusanmokun from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things, and an almost unrecognizable Benedict Cumberbatch who takes the film to new irreverence as an accidentally mistaken version of Jesus.

All these strange, quirky characters revolve around Clarence as he tries to make a better life for himself and prove himself worthy of his ill-fated love interest Varinia (Anna Diop). LaKeith Stanfield leans into the cynical, skeptical, onscreen personality he has used effectively in prior fantastical films like Sorry to Bother You, Haunted Mansion, and even Get Out. Despite his cynicism, Clarence has enough cliched character growth to make some positive societal choices for others, even as he still scams those around him. Clarence continues to pursue his fake Messiah miracles with growing success until he finds out the true cost of the path he has chosen. Then the film takes a serious and dramatic turn into a violent exploration of racism and classism. We think we know what is going to happen, but the final crucifixion scenes subvert both traditional narratives and cynical new viewer expectations.

The Book of Clarence throws many important social justice themes and philosophical questions at viewers who may ultimately feel overwhelmed and disoriented by the irreverent and quirky delivery style. The trope of the lovable rascal with the heart of gold is quickly subverted into an ultimate theme of “mess around and find out.” It’s been a long time since a film completely bewildered me in such a good way. This movie is not for everyone. But, if you have an appetite for quirkiness and a tolerance for explorations of hard truths wrapped in an allegory, The Book of Clarence will give you a great deal to think about.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Weird and provocative. Not for everyone.
• Quirky subversive messaging.
• Strong performances by the lead actors.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: The American Society of Magical Negroes

A poignant exploration of racism and appeasement wrapped in sarcastic, quirky, rom-com magic. 

A “magical negro” is a sarcastic artistic term used to describe an inspirational Black side character whose sole purpose is to inspire, comfort, and motivate the story’s protagonist. Although they frequently appear in speculative films and television, they don’t typically have actual magical powers. “Magical” is a sarcastic reference to their ability to help the (not-Black) protagonist find motivation to work through their emotional obstacles. It’s sort of like a mentor but often with more of a folksy / self-deprecating vibe. I won’t list specific films or shows but, if you think for a second, you can probably remember a few examples. The trope of the "magical" Black person is not bad per se, but it becomes exhausting when it’s repeatedly used, especially as a way to give lip service to diversity while keeping diverse characters in background roles and out of leading roles.

The American Society of Magical Negroes parodies this literary and film trope by creating an actual organization of people who problem solve anxiety-causing issues for white people in the real world. If you are expecting some kind of Black version of Hogwarts or Shadowhunter Academy, prepare to be disappointed. The film is a sarcastic deep dive into society’s underlying class systems. It’s much more of a companion film to social commentary stories like American Fiction and Origin than to fantasy pieces like Harry Potter or Shadowhunters. There is some magic on screen but not much. The fantastical moments are meant to be a brief, humorous backdrop, not a primary plot device.

In the film, Aren (Justice Smith) is an extremely polite, young Black man and a struggling visual artist. After a disappointing art show he encounters a drunk woman at night who hands him her purse, causing the woman’s two male friends to accuse Aren of stealing it. Aren is understandably fearful of what will happen next. A kindly older Black man, Roger (David Alan Grier), appears and magically transfers the purse back to the woman. Roger then engages in charming, folksy banter about the delicious food at a nearby restaurant. This de-escalates the situation and the two men who were previously threatening Aren become friendly and leave happily with the woman. Roger then invites Aren to join a society of people who use folksy banter make white people feel more comfortable, then they pivot to inspirational cliches to inspire them. By doing this they help make the world a safer place for people of color. According to Roger, without this surreptitious placating behavior, the violence against Black people will escalate in America.

Obviously there is a lot to unpack in this premise. Aren is led through secret door in an unassuming shop and finds himself in a meeting room of Black people who have been granted minor magical powers in exchange for taking on assignments to be supportive advisors to stressed, non-Black people. Aren has some understandable hesitation about the mission statement (and even the name) of the group but ultimately (due to his dwindling finances) accepts a job inspiring a self-absorbed young man, Jason (Drew Tarver), at a tech company. With Aren’s help, Jason progresses at the firm at the cost of Aren’s own career hopes and at the cost of Aren’s love interest Lizzie (An-Li Bogan). Introverted Aren initially enjoys the opportunity to be accepted in his new workplace and to help  Jason. But Aren grows to resent his artificially subservient role. Additionally, despite her superior work performance, Lizzie finds herself cut out of opportunities because Jason’s louder persona is confused with talent by their bosses. The story has some additional interesting context: Aren is biracial (partly white); Lizzie is a person of color; and, although Jason is self-absorbed, he is not a true villain. In addition to the scenes of Aren’s adventures, we also see snippets of the other Society members working in various timelines and locations, inspiring leading characters. Each scenario references a famous classic film with the “magical negro” trope.

As you can imagine, this film is not for everyone. The title may mislead some into thinking it’s a high fantasy—it’s not. Although the Society members can time travel, teleport, and blink objects into existence, magic is a minor part of the story. On the other hand, the interactions of Aren and Lizzie make the film feel substantially like a rom-com. But the trope of the misguided romantic triangle (between Jason, Lizzie, and Aren)  is not the true message. The real story is about race and classism (and later sexism). The theme of the supportive, inspiring colleague quickly shifts to the more troubling concept of appeasement by those in the minority towards those who are in power in society. These uncomfortable, underlying themes will resonate with anyone who has felt like an outsider in a space that should equally belong to them. After several mildly humorous and ironic moments, we have a climactic scene where Aren decides to tell Jason the truth about his feelings of fear and erasure. It’s not a universal monologue on all types of racism but rather a specific niche of oppression felt by some people of color in some societal spaces. It rages against both the appeaser and the oppressor.

The ultimate messaging is sharp and meaningful but it may get lost in the rom-com hijinks. Like The Book of Clarence, the story is weighed down by an overload of conflicting film elements. However, for those who can relate to Aren’s dilemma of standing up for himself in a society that will then see him as threatening or alien, the film will truly hit home. The American Society of Magical Negroes is a good companion piece for other recent films on race, such as American Fiction, Origin, and The Book of Clarence. For those who connect with the story, the film will provide a lot to ponder and hopefully create a starting point for meaningful discussions on Black roles in film and in real life.

 

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

·         A poignant exploration of racism and appeasement

·         Conflicting thematic elements

·         Heavy, biting sarcasm that may elude some viewers

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Novella Project: To the Woman in the Pink Hat

A futuristic exploration of contemporary race and gender issues woven into a both disturbing and relatable tale. 

Set in a near future America, which feels futuristic as well as current, To the Woman in the Pink Hat is a story that challenges our views on morality and justice. Jada is a young, Black woman with a supportive family and a bright future ahead of her. But when Jada is convicted of a terrible crime (one which she fully admits to committing) she gets the option of an alternative sentence. Instead of spending her life in prison, she has the chance to live in a state of the art rehabilitation center designed to reform convicted young women of color into future leaders in society. Like many of the other program participants, Jada is both a victim of and a perpetrator of a horrific crime. All of the criminal inmates are referred to by the title “Leader” so the facility’s staff refer to Jada as “Leader Jada.” This is a brilliantly creepy way to open the story. Jada and her fellow inmates sarcastically compare the center to college. Young people of color sleep in dorms, eat at a dining hall, and attend classes on a range of subjects including politics, botany, and martial arts. They are constantly being evaluated to determine their aptitudes and their potential future “leadership” path in society.

The vibe of the facility feels like that of a dystopian version of an HBCU. But what is really going on in this rehabilitation center? Each title of respect and each exchange of therapeutic encouragement also carries an underlying threat. Some of the classes the inmates must take don’t align with leadership responsibilities. And most of all, it is clear that while the “leaders” have some elements of self-determination, they really have no true freedom.

The narrative begins with Jada in a counseling session with her AI therapist Ayana who wants Jada to come to terms with her crime and her victim. Ayana is an artificial intelligence originally designed to look like a graying, kindly, older Black woman. She is designed for Jada’s comfort since, due to the crime committed against her, Jada cannot abide a white therapist. However, because of new rules relating to AI transparency, Ayana has some of her physical features stripped so that she looks partly robotic in the therapy session. The visual of Ayana that Jada describes is jarring, and the initial scene grounds us in the dichotomy of truth versus fakeness that permeates the story. With this setup in the opening pages, we may think we know how this story is going to unfold. It feels like a classic dystopian institutional setting with an inevitable path to racism and oppression. But the tale takes an unexpected direction, particularly by the end, and circles back to the opening themes of justice versus retribution, self-determination versus manipulation, and accountability versus guilt. 

To the Woman in the Pink Hat efficiently weaves multiple layers of racial and gender social commentary through Jada’s lived experiences. Authentic connection, support, and beliefs are contrasted with artificial or superficial responses. The title of the story references the superficial, performative ally-ship symbolized by the knitted pink hat worn by someone who seemed to be an ally. Other reminders of falseness are quietly and deftly sewn into the story’s setting, including the unappetizing dining hall food called printloaf and the center’s artificial but life-like window scenery used to create a false sense of connection with the outside world. 

In contrast, the story shows us genuine family bonds through Jada’s relationship with her father, her younger sisters, and memories of her late mother. We also see the friendships Jada forms with the other inmates. However, the primary conflict in the story is the terrible racial and gender based crime perpetrated against Jada (and other women) as well as her equally terrible response which landed her in prison. Jada never denies her guilt and always expresses regret. The problematic inconsistency in the story is Jada herself. She is at times strong, resilient, and pragmatic, and at other times naïve and irrational, and at other times, cunningly rage-filled and vengeful. This frustrating contradiction in the main character ironically keeps us hooked because we genuinely don’t know what she will do or say next as each scene unfolds. 

  The twisty ending is powerful and unsettling, returning to the concept of self-determination versus manipulation, as well as grief and violence versus accountability. Overall, the story is a powerful allegory of well-intentioned but performative emptiness contrasted with the larger concept of the rage of a dream deferred. To the Woman in the Pink Hat is both brilliant and unsettling, leaving us with difficult questions to ponder and even more difficult answers to absorb.

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Highlights: Futuristic but relatable, contradictory protagonist, efficiently addresses multiple layers of racial and gender social commentary

 Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Jordan, LaToya, To The Woman in the Pink Hat, [Aqueduct Press, 2023]

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.  

Review: Out There Screaming

A clever take on the greatest horror of all: reality

As coldness creeps into the air and night arrives earlier, the days are perfect for ghost stories, monsters, and things out of the ordinary. Out There Screaming, An Anthology of New Black Horror is a collection of short stories edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams. The nineteen tales are penned by a selection of talented storytellers, including Hugo Award winning and popular favorites N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nalo Hopkinson. Each of the stories offers a clever take on the greatest horror of all: reality.

Out There Screaming opens with an introduction from Jordan Peele discussing a medieval torture device designed to make people feel forgotten and degraded. Centuries later, the real horror is the way society still does this to us. As expected from a story collection associated with Jordan Peele, the tales in Out There Screaming have abundant and clever social commentary, as well as thoughtful insights into the human condition in general.

As several of the narratives remind us, reality can be particularly horrific when you are a person of color—even without the fantastical elements. This is a recurring theme in many of the stories, but not in the way we are used to seeing such narratives play out in our media. From a Reconstruction era Black town to a modern-day motorist police stop, we see real-life horror entangled with supernatural forces. But the anthology also includes stories dealing, in a twisted way, with other topics such as grief, jealousy, addiction, self-identity, and belonging. In every adventure, it is clear that we have crossed over into an existence where things are more than they seem, with storytelling in the style of The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, and, of course, Get Out.

This is an anthology where every story delivers—some better than others, but all are memorable and powerful. A standout story in the collection is Eye & Tooth, about a pair of brother and sister monster hunters who meet their match during a job in Texas. The story hits many appealing elements, including sibling bonding, dramatic fight scenes, and even a bit of found family. A poignant entry is The Aesthete, a science fiction story that follows a day in the life of an artificially created young man who is constantly scrutinized on social media as a condition of his existence. It is a timely allegory for the constant pressure that young people face, in particular young Black men, and it is a story readers will think about long after finishing the collection. The book ends with a discussion in the form of a play that uses the script format to come full circle on the themes that started the collection.

Out There Screaming benefits from both the provocative style of storytelling and the fact that most of the tales have a very satisfying ending. Although some of the endings are also poignant, sad, or fully tragic, they all avoid traditional tropes of the martyred Black person or racism winning. The stories are primarily mind-bending and insightful rather than overtly slash and gore, although there is some slashing and gore, especially in The Norwood Trouble and A Grief of the Dead.

The anthology includes the following tales:

Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin – A racist cop sees car headlights as eyes watching him.

Eye & Tooth by Rebecca Roanhorse – Monster-hunting brother and sister meet their match.

Wandering Devil by Cadwell Turnbull – A man with abandonment issues tries to avoid commitment.

Invasion of the Baby Snatchers by Lesley Nneka Arimah – A government agent fights against shapeshifting aliens who use humans to breed destructive creatures.

The Other One by Violet Allen – Things take a macabre turn after a couple breaks up.

Lasirèn by Erin E. Adams – The hunt for her lost sister leads a girl to a confrontation with a water creature.

The Rider by Tananarive Due – In the 1960s, a pair of confident female freedom riders cross paths with a different kind of monster on their bus.

The Aesthete by Justin C. Key – An artificial human tries to find peace in a world of constant online observation and prejudice.

Pressure by Ezra Claytan Daniels – A man deals with the pressure of returning home to his family as another kind of pressure grows around them.

Dark Home by Nnedi Okorafor – After burying her father in his home country of Nigeria, a grieving daughter brings back more than she expects to her quiet New Mexico neighborhood.

Flicker by L. D. Lewis – A young woman watching the world collapse around her has a startling revelation.

The Most Strongest Obeah Woman in the World by Nalo Hopkinson – A Jamaican girl’s encounter with a monster leaves her changed.

The Norwood Trouble by Maurice Broaddus – When a peaceful thriving Black town is attacked by violent racists, the town leaders come up with a solution.

A Grief of the Dead by Rion Amilcar Scott – A man struggles with grief after the death of his twin brother.

A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers – Two dead young women from different decades haunt a dangerous stretch of highway.

An American Fable by Chesya Burke – A Black WWII soldier returning to his racist hometown encounters a strange little girl on the train.

Your Happy Place by Terence Taylor – A prison worker investigates the disappearances of inmates who are part of a special reprogramming project.

Hide & Seek by P. Djèlí Clark – Two brothers in a family of magic wielders try to survive the backlash of their mother’s erratic behavior.

Origin Story by Tochi Onyebuchi – A play about children understanding the role of race unfolds through the characters’ voices.

Despite the description of Out There Screaming as A New Anthology of Black Horror, the stories will appeal to non-horror fans who want twisty, clever analyses of our bizarre existence as humans in the current era. It is sometimes said that art will save the world. These stories might not save the world, but they might help you see it through a new lens, and hopefully feel more empowered.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights

· Clever social commentary

· Memorable stories

· Moderate, but present, horror violence

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Nanoreview: They Cloned Tyrone isn't too far from how things are in real life

You'll laugh about it, then think it over, then realize with a shudder that it wasn't joking

The pitch-perfect Blaxploitation homage in the new Netflix film They Cloned Tyrone is so hilariously over the top, so absurdly far-fetched, that you may miss the realism just beneath the surface. It's not science fiction to say that US government agencies have repeatedly treated Black people as disposable and interchangeable. It's not science fiction to say that the US has had a murky relationship with medical ethics, especially with Black patients. It's not science fiction to say that a segment of WASP leaders sincerely believe that they have already built the common ground for interracial peace and the only step needed is for Black people to agree to it. When you consider all those details, They Cloned Tyrone proceeds almost like a documentary.

The best satire is that which shows us exactly what the problem looks like, maybe through a funhouse lens, but still recognizable. The film's trio of lead characters are comical exaggerations of overused stereotypes, but it is their distorted irrealism that frees the story to make its points more openly, to engage in the Black cultural practice known as real talk. A serious documentary about the benefits that WASP society derives from enforcing the status quo in depressed neighborhoods would barely be noticed. But a speculative farce with world-class actors, sharp dialogues, unafraid hyperviolence, expert direction, and an aesthetic sense heightened all the way to the top of Jamie Foxx's afro? Now that's how you get audiences to pay attention.

Partly due to the references to Blaxploitation cinema, the look and feel of this movie exists in a curious limbo where audio casettes and funk music coexist with smartphones and Bitcoin scams. Set aside the props, and the story might as well be happening in the 1970s or tomorrow, cleverly signaling how little has truly changed. This effect is achieved with loving attention to detail in costume design, set design, and cinematography. Of particular note is the protagonist played by John Boyega, a meticulously crafted performance that makes you forget that the actor's natural accent is British.

Lies that tell a truth, as Alan Moore called the narrative art. The movie's ridiculously freakish premise is part of the point: even in such unbelievable circumstances, the message still rings true, and it does because it comes from a place of honesty, from deep familiarity with the damage that the American Way of Life™ does to Black communities. It may be about fake people, but They Cloned Tyrone is the type of art that can't be faked.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

A look back at Ancestry & Culture, an Alternative to Race in 5e

OneD&D still doesn't know how to fix the game's long-standing racism problem, but an independent publisher already offered a solution two years ago

Must all elves know how to shoot bows? Must all dwarves be talented at masonry? Must all halfings have a knack for sneaking where they're not supposed to?

All these are more learned than inherited traits, yet Dungeons & Dragons has consistently failed to acknowledge the difference. It was Tolkien who first popularized the image of elves as ethereal paragons of beauty and orcs as savages basically made of evil, but in the decades since Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons has reinforced and cemented that bioessentialist paradigm in the popular consciousness.

The current owner of the D&D brand, Wizards of the Coast, has been taking tiny steps toward removing the problematic implications of bioessentialist descriptions of fantasy creatures. Last year, errata files were published that removed default moral alignments from playable characters and some monsters. This change aims to do away with the decades-long trope that certain populations of intelligent beings are innately evil. Of course, attributing one single moral stance to an entire people is not only lazy storytelling, but also an extremely dangerous mindset with real historical consequences. So, for example, sending the heroes to raid an orc encampment just because they're orcs and they must be killed on sight is no longer an acceptable plot point. It's bad enough that Tolkien reinvented orcs as the incarnation of a plethora of Orientalist clichés; we don't need to add on top of it the idea that there's a group of people whom it's always OK to kill.

However, this update to the rules did little to correct the fundamental problem, which is linking behavior to lineage. In the Fifth Edition Player's Handbook, the description of elves still says they "love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry, and the good things of the world," while halflings "are easily moved to pity and hate to see any living thing suffer," and half-orcs "are not evil by nature, but evil does lurk within them." You'd think these behaviors must have a cultural origin, which would make them contingent and malleable, but the manual treats them as fixed elements of their respective heritages.

In a further attempt to separate characters' cultural and biological traits, Wizards of the Coast has recently released playtest material for an overhaul of the Fifth Edition rules. This new project, called OneD&D, consists so far in a revision of the steps for character creation. The proposed update would take into account a character's background in addition to their ancestry (an approach that competitor game Pathfinder has been using since 2019). For example, a character with the Cleric class and the Acolyte background would begin play with different skills and proficiencies compared to another Cleric with the Pilgrim background.

While this system is a move in the right direction, it's definitely not enough, and in some respects it goes backwards. The OneD&D playtest links languages to backgrounds, resulting in absurd assumptions such as all characters with the Farmer background speaking Halfling, or all Hermits speaking Sylvan. It still carries heavy bioessentialist baggage to designate Draconic as the language of nobility or Goblin as the language of warfare. And the core ancestries of the game keep much of the original problem: dwarves are still assumed to be trained in forge tools (presumably from birth), gnomes instinctively know how to magically create a tiny machine, and halflings are born with Stealth proficiency. And when it comes to characters of mixed heritage, the suggested mechanics make no sense, and the text reaches a degree of exoticization you'd expect from a 1980s game.

D&D has a lot of catching up to do. Strangely, it still uses the term "race" to refer to Tolkien's canonical humanoid species. Replacing "race" with literally any other descriptor should be the very first step to keep D&D relevant to future generations of players, and the immediate next step should be to pay attention to the inexcusable missteps that keep occurring and keep damaging the good faith the game has cultivated.

This discussion is by no means new, and fans have been thinking of alternatives faster than Wizards of the Coast can make up its mind. In 2020, independent publisher Arcanist Press saw the problem with D&D "races" and launched an unofficial supplement: Ancestry & Culture, which contains a clearer, more practical set of rules for character creation. The approach is, in a nutshell, what it says in the book's title: each character is born from a certain lineage and is raised in a certain culture, and the two can be freely chosen in any combination. Biological traits are limited to lifespan, size, speed, senses, monstrous body parts, and when aplicable, physical resistance to damage. Cultural traits refer to everything that comes from education and training: languages, weapon proficiencies, ability score increases, and starting cantrips. So, if you want, you can have an elf raised by tieflings, a dragonborn raised by humans, an orc raised by gnomes, and so on. Notably (and rightly), alignment is neither an inherited nor a learned trait. Alignment is a strictly individual matter, unrelated to whichever society your character comes from.

Furthermore, Ancestry & Culture contains remarkably sensible (and sensitive) rules for creating characters born with mixed lineage and/or raised in a multicultural environment. If you've ever wanted to roleplay the child of a halfling and an orc who grew up near a dwarf-gnome border, this supplement is exactly what you need. For an even more granular method of character creation, there's an appendix for you to build your own combination of cultural traits. As unofficial material, it only includes the ancestries enumerated in the Open Gaming License, but, anticipating the players' understandable wish to adapt other ancestries to this system, the author explains how to generalize the application of these principles.

The standard of quality of this supplement received the highest endorsement when it won two ENNIE awards: Best Electronic Book and Best Supplement, in addition to a nomination for Product of the Year. Since the publication of Ancestry & Culture, Arcanist Press has gone on to launch half a dozen other similar rulesets, with a total of over a hundred alternative ancestries to choose from. As a final treat, Ancestry & Culture includes two playable adventures, one centered on protecting a multicultural city, and one about convincing various peoples to cooperate.

So we don't need to wait for Wizards of the Coast to learn its lesson. We're living in the middle of an explosion of creativity in the roleplaying community, and it's evident that players and independent creators have moved on from the outdated mindset the game was created with.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +1 for beautiful character illustrations that show precisely how the various combinations of bloodline and upbringing can produce wonderfully unique stories.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Marshall, Gwendolyn. Ancestry & Culture: an Alternative to Race in 5e [Arcanist Press, 2020].

Microreview [Book]: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

 A story with instructive, powerful, and necessary anger.

Oppression can be physical, but it’s often more than that. America has subjugated Black bodies for a long time—first with blatant slavery, and then with figurative, rather than literal shackles that has the insidious ability of being intergenerational. Disadvantages are established at birth, and the steps to get out of them are elusive, as ordained by the social system. In Riot Baby, a character is inserted with a gadget that monitors and controls them. But it’s also a significant metaphor for how incarceration, social disadvantages, and life with seemingly no escape route is embedded into many Black bodies. Not because they’re whipped and denied voting rights, but because America’s system has a way of finagling itself to mostly keep the status quo, while giving an illusion of exaggerated racial progress. It’s a system that should draw a lot of anger. And in Riot Baby, it does just that. Anger is suffused in this novella, both in characters and themes, giving even its meandering sections raging energy.

In America, Ella is a girl gifted with magical abilities that allow her to levitate, see the future, enter people’s minds, and much more. She mostly interacts with her family or secludes herself. She is Black. So is her younger brother Kev, who is incarcerated outrageously for being a young Black man. From there, the story explores American history, tragedies, and its deeply wrongful consequences and insistence, all within a novella that spans decades, many locations, while never really losing grasp of its narrative.

Kev is a tremendously fully drawn character. His sorrow, pain, moments of camaraderie, and anger, are all developed in ways that deliver a full-forced punch and are conducive to the narrative. Riot Baby has some of the best dialogue I’ve read in quite a while – both punchy and natural – and most of that dialogical brilliance is in Kev’s sections. Meanwhile, Ella could’ve solely been a mouthpiece for the book’s themes, but she’s so much more than that. Her semi-solitary/introspective journey might be more thematic, while Kev’s interaction with many people lends itself more to characterization, but Onyebuchi infuses Ella’s thematic exploration with otherworldliness, giving the themes a sense of magic, albeit an often upsetting and infuriating one.

Riot Baby flows quite well, but not completely smoothly. The story starts out very strong, has a mid-section with both emotionally cutting and meanderingly adrift sections, making me always appreciate Onyebuchi’s craft, but wondering if he had a solid plan of wrapping the story up. The parts I found meandering became worth it and increased in my estimation retrospectively because its conclusion is absolutely gorgeous, as the anger that had gradually built up erupted in something that absolutely befits what came before. I just wish the story could’ve made its lesser bits golden during my reading rather than after.

America might embed oppression into Black bodies, but as Riot Baby shows, it's not the only thing that seeps intergenerationally. Every day there’s a new racial tragedy, but every day there is also dignity and courage. Because oppression doesn’t make most people huddle away and let it eat away at them. There’s a fire that existed before, existed now, and will exist into the future. That fire has become stronger than ever before, and throughout all the terror, there’s hope that it will scorch wickedness and injustices. That feat within the American climate might seem daunting, but it’s possible. It’s not a fantasy, but it is magic. 

 The Math:

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 For a brilliant ending.
+1 For a unique, fluid writing style.

Negatives: -1 For a middle that while still worthwhile, isn't as strong as its beginning or ending.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Onyebuchi, Tochi. Riot Baby [Tordotcom, 2020].

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, editor, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!”

Interview: P. Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout

Hatred. Racism. Marches in the streets. Violence.  Standing tall and doing what you need to do.

I might be describing America right this second, while at the same time describing the America of 1922, of P. Djèlí Clark's novella Ring Shout, available Oct 24th from Tor.com Publishing.  In this dark fantasy historical novella, the film maker D.W. Griffith is a sorcerer, whose 1915 film Birth of a Nation cast a spell that forced our darkest thoughts to the surface. The Ku Klux Klan (and it grosses me out to even type those three words) gain power and have their own plans.  The hatred they feed on, it turns them into literal monsters.  And when monsters rise, so do monster hunters.  In prohibition Georgia, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword, a best friend whose a sharpshooter, and enough internal demons to keep anyone up at night. 

Anyone can write a novella about a girl who kills monsters with a magical sword. But it takes someone of Clark's skill to write Ring Shout. He makes it personal, he puts it in your face, he doesn't pull any punches. Visceral body horror, internalized hate, America's legacy of dehumanization. How he managed to cram all of this into less than 200 pages is it's own magic trick. You can read an excerpt of Ring Shout here.

Clark is the Nebula, Locus, and Alex award winning, and Hugo, and World Fantasy nominated author of the novellas and short stories The Haunting of Tram Car 015, The Black Gods Drums, The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington, among many other short stories and short novels. His short fiction and essays have appeared in  Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed,  and Tor.com.  He is a founding member of Fiyah Literary Magazine. His first full length novel, A Master of Djinn, was recently announced. When not writing, he works as an academic historian, studying comparative slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World.  You can learn more about Clark and his work by visiting his website or his blog, or by following him on twitter. 

Mr. Clark was kind enough to talk with me about the music behind his new novella, the novella's long (and then fast) journey to publication, how the novella got personal, and more. Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: You mention on your blog that this story was in your head for a long time before you wrote it down. Can you tell us about when and why you decided to write the story down? And while you were drafting it out, did were there any scenes or characters that ended up completely differently than how you had originally imagined them?

P. Djèlí Clark: Yeah, the story was definitely with me for a while—mostly in dreamt up scenes and characters with a smattering of a plot. Visuals or a song could send me daydreaming for a minute. As I’m prone to do, it’s only when I have a full sketch of a story in my head that I start jotting down notes. That was in early August 2016. I sat down and wrote up Ring Shout from start to ending, on the Notes feature on my iPhone. Then I put it down and went and lived the rest of my life. It wasn’t until April of 2019 that it started to become “a thing.” I was sitting in a DC café, on the phone with my editor Diana Pho about a book contract for an unrelated completed full-length novel. The book world being the book world, it probably wouldn’t come out until 2021. My novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 had just been released and that meant there’d be this big gap before I was next published. Diana asked if I might be interested in doing another novella in between—that is, if I had any ideas. I pitched two concepts, one of which was Ring Shout. It ended up in the contract.

Then came the real trouble. I had nothing written but a set of notes from almost 3 years back and a head full of ideas. I had until about September to turn it into a working story. Planned to get it done that summer. But nope. Academic work and copyedits on the unrelated full-length novel pretty much devoured my writing time. Finally, I got started on August 30, 2019. Two days before it was due. Had to ask for an extension. Then somehow, in the next four weeks, got it written. By that time whole new characters had been added, scenes had changed, and elements of the overall plot had been rewritten—so that it only resembles in passing those original notes from 2016. But hey, that’s the writing process.

NOAF: You also mentioned that “music is integral to this story.” Were there any songs in particular, that got you into the mindset of the story? If Ring Shout had a soundtrack, what might be on it?

PDC: Well, first actual ring shouts. I listened to a lot of those: recorded versions from the early twentieth-century, modern day re-enactors, even attended a live performance. It was those more than anything that kept the story alive. On a long drive, if I was by myself, I’d just play them over and over again and imagine the world I intended to build. I think I started doing that at least since 2015. But like I said there were also visuals mingled with the music. Scenes from Beyonce’s Formation video and the whole sound of it set my synapses firing. When I actually started writing, by chance I was listening to Lupe Fiasco’s album Drogas Wave, and the first five songs on there were a big influence—particularly with Maryse’s sword. In the original draft version there were lyrics from a range of artists: Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Gregory Isaacs, Marlena Shaw, UGK, Outkast. Then my editor informed me about copyrights, and it was all cut. But yeah, the soundtrack would definitely include stuff like that.

NOAF: You don't pull any punches. Ring Shout is about hate, the Ku Klux Klan, and hate consuming the world. There's racism, racial hatred, body horror, and people (possibly including readers) facing their own demons. How hard (or easy) was this story to write?

PDC: It took some work. Dealing with the Ku Klux Klan, that part was maybe easiest. The whole idea of monstrous Klan members came from narratives I’d read by ex-slaves in the 1930s WPA, some 20 years ago. I’d also grown up in the South long enough to hear tales of the Klan and racial violence. Taking that and melding it into a fantasy, making it the external evil to be confronted—that was cathartic. Dealing with the inner demons the protagonist faces, about hate on an internal level, that was the hardest hill to climb. That took some soul searching and self-confrontations. That got personal.

NOAF: Talk to us about Maryse, Sadie, and Chef. Who are they, and what makes them such compelling characters?

PDC: Maryse is our main protagonist. A sword-wielding heroine out of a fantasy novel. She’s good at fighting monsters, less so at facing her own demons. And she’s got a choice to make. Chef is the Harlem Hellfighter, returned from WW1 to end up on another battlefield, and carrying her own scars. Maryse and Chef I knew were characters before I had names for them. Sadie came later. Brash, foul-mouthed, and deadly with a rifle, she’s the added bit of chaos I thought the story needed. I think, I hope, what makes them compelling is they each have backstories/personalities that make them distinct. That can lead to friction; but as a team, as friends, when they close ranks they’re damn formidable.

NOAF: More than a few reviewers have mentioned they wish the novella was longer, that they could spend more time with characters they loved, especially watching Maryse wield her sword. Were there any scenes that were cut from earlier drafts? Do you have any plans to write more of these characters, or in this world?

PDC: Be careful what you wish for! I’m a habitual over-writer. Every novella or novelette I’ve written started as a short story that got out of hand. With Ring Shout, at least I was aiming for a novella. Even so, there were lots of smaller scenes, longer interactions, character developments, dialogue, etc. that had to be cut, all to keep it under the magic 40k. The final draft I got in was something like 39,980 words. Every copyedit I’ve done since, has been me trying to get things I’d cut snuck back in by trimming prose here and there and not going over 19 more words. Pretty sure I’ve made my editors nervous! Plans to write more in this world? Don’t know yet. But I like to leave the door open.

NOAF: Who were some of your favorite writers and artists, when you were growing up? What about their work made you decide to become a writer?

PDC: Well in SFF, Madeleine L’Engle was a definite influence when I was younger—and there’s an ode to her, of sorts, in Ring Shout. But I didn’t decide to “become a writer” until later in life. Well into my late 20s. Before that, it just wasn’t a path I saw for someone like myself, with my particular identity and background. It was coming across writers like Octavia Butler or Tananarive Due that compelled me to think maybe I could do this—maybe I had a voice to add to genre.

NOAF: What are you working on now? Any new or current projects that you can tell us about?

PDC: A secondary world fantasy novella—about an assassin who is given a seemingly impossible, perhaps existential, assignment. Also, she’s quite undead.

NOAF: Thank you so much! Ring Shout looks incredible and you've also got me all intrigued about this undead assassin.

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.  

Microreview [Book]: Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff

"Stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn't make them perfect," The Safe Negro Travel Guide publisher George Berry tells his nephew Atticus Turner in the beginning of Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country.

Berry is sort of an old wise man character in the novel, always there delivering helpful truths and constructive advice when needed. Here he is unraveling Atticus's – and his own – conflicted feelings towards science fiction and fantasy literature. They are both in love with genre classics such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft but at the same time register that the authors and their works are deeply problematic, especially from the viewpoint of black readers which is what both men are.

The novel takes place in 1950s, but this discussion is a flashback. It is possible that they are supposedly discussing racist undertones of Lovecraft's fiction during the same decade when Moore's Ford lynchings and other infamous killings and home burnings happened, not to mention less lethal forms of systematic oppression in Jim Crow America. I'm not completely convinced that a person who publishes a guidebook dedicated to keeping traveling black Americans safe and alive would really be as generous as uncle George here, but this lingering doubt of the plausibility of the characterization is about the only negative thing I have to say about the novel.

Come to think of it, I'm also not quite sure whether Lovecraft's racism would really have been a talking point among fans in 1940s. Fantasy fandom was happy to give his busts around for 40 years during much, much more modern times, after all, stopping only occasionally to contemplate whether the bust was flattering enough to its source. Ruff's characters and their concerns may seem a bit contemporary at times, but I don't think that it spoils any of the fun, frankly.

Lovecraft Country is formed of consecutive paranormal tales which foreground different members of the novel's cast. The cast is all-black and that is the point – even (or especially) the story which begins with a mysterious metamorphosis of one of the characters into a white-skinned version of herself really draws its power from the discussion of race: how black Americans of the not-so-distant past were second-class citizens in an unbelievable variety of ways. "Nevermind the paranormal stuff – isn't that just horrific?" is to me the question that the book is asking its reader.

Actually, the horror fantasy content of the novel is so un-horrific that it is extremely unlikely to scare anybody. Ruff's light-hearted tone makes it clear from the beginning that nothing too brutal is going to happen to any of the novel's main characters. There is a sinister white shadow looming over all the cheerful action, however, and the mix of registers is interesting. It's a happy book about awful stuff.

In the novel, familiar horror and science fiction tropes are contrasted with the deep-rooted racism and bigotry of the era, and the latter is what the reader will probably consider otherworldly. Moving in to a haunted house is nothing compared to the neighbors who try to spook and vandalize the new home owners to move out of a previously white-only block. What's more, buying a property in the first place was a bureaucratic nightmare for people of color, and Ruff has the infodumps to prove it.

So, there might be a Shoggoth or two running loose in the bushes, and Cthulhu cults scheming to open gateways to alien dimensions, but neither are as dangerous as white sheriffs.

Ruff's book started out as a TV series pitch – it was meant to be an X-Files style show in which the excuse for weekly paranormal adventures was that the characters were collecting data for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. Even though the original pitch was unsuccessful, we are in fact going to see what the people putting together this twisted Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy are going to look like on the screen, because now there is a TV show in the works.

I recommend reading the book first, though, because Ruff's prose has levels that the camera probably won't capture.


***

The Math

Base Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for combining unimaginable horrors with truly unimaginable horrors, +1 for winks to readers versed in pulp classics of the genre.

Penalties: -2 for cardboard cut-out characters (-1 in case you are not as severely allergic as I)

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 – "A mostly enjoyable experience"

Reference: Ruff, Matt. Lovecraft Country [HarperCollins 2016]

***

POSTED BY: Spacefaring Kitten, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018.