A few months ago, I engaged in a conversation about The Handmaid’s Tale on Tiktok that started a lot of heated discourse. Which was fascinating because I love that book. And it’s Sequel, The Testaments. I found a lot of value in that story and it challenged my worldview quite a bit. In fact, I’d probably list it if you asked me for the books that most impacted me in my twenties. But here’s the thing... despite my love for the story, I couldn’t help but notice that it fell into a trap that a lot of white dystopian stories do. It looked at systems that have consistently targeted Black and brown people for centuries and attempted to talk about them while conveniently erasing those Black and brown victims from the page. 

And yes, there are many reasons for the choices that Margarett Atwood made as a writer. I am not writing this to criticize her. I am writing it because it was an important moment for me. As I talked about that book, I really had to sit and reflect on the way that white authors approach their worst nightmares. And I had to reconcile the fact that, for many of them, the most honest parts of their stories is the fact that we [Black and brown people] had to disappear for their worst nightmares to reach them. 

What do I mean by that?

Let’s say that America heads the direction of Gilead (which doesn’t feel like as big of a stretch as it once did). Looking at the shape and makeup of our country, who do you think the primary victims would be? Black and brown women. Yes, everyone but white men would suffer to varying degrees. In fact, we would all likely suffer A LOT. But at the very center of that suffering, the actual target would be Black and brown women. And yet, for many of the stories that shape our desire for collective resistance, there are no Black or brown women to be found. 

Why is that a problem? Because in the real world, those same people who have been activated by a desire for justice go on to not even notice they have already arrived at their worst nightmare because they have spent their entire lives being told that in Gilead, Ofred is what a victim looks like. For them, the suffering of Black and brown people is something other. Something foreign. It is not yet their fight.

We’re watching that in real time right now! All over the country, there are people who are just now realizing that oppression can happen in America. Not because oppression is happening for the first time, but because every system in our country has worked to condition them to never see it too clearly. 

The thing I love about Black horror is that it takes humanities worst and most primal nightmares and forces us to look at them honestly. To see the nuances of how our fear presents itself in the actual world we live in. Not just because the monsters that roam the dark are searching for the most disenfranchised and vulnerable, but also because the systems that empower those nightmares are all but invisible to anyone with the privilege not to feel how terrifying they can become. Black horror matters because it looks not only at who the monsters are really after, but where their power came from and why those who are able to stop them aren’t interested in doing so....and, more uncomfortably, it points out how we, ourselves, can become them.

I know that for many, horror is just an opportunity to be scared for a moment. But it can be so much more. Well-made horror provides us an opportunity to dive into the darkest parts of the world we live in and to give a face and name to the things that hunt us in the night. They gift us with a glimpse at the liberating strength of time and community and help us envision an escape from the monsters we have spent our lives knowing we have no power over. And most importantly, they show us the shimmering light in the darkness. They help us to find the will to believe that there is a way out. 

In the same way that dystopian stories force us to look at the systems of our world, horror gives a name to our most primal fears. And in knowing their names, we gain power over them.

I recently read The Reformatory by Tananarive Due and I’m not sure I even have the words to describe the impact it had on me. It follows two young Black siblings. A little boy who, in an effort to protect his older sister against a local white boy, gets himself locked up in the local reformatory for boys where he is haunted by haints--the spirits of boys who had died in the reformatory over the years--, and his older sister, who is on a mission to win his freedom so that she can rescue him from the white retribution she knows is on the way. The story is set in Jim Crow Florida and not only explores the horror of being Black in the 1950s south, but also takes us beyond the victimhood of our two individual central characters. It gives us a glimpse of both the systematic oppression and murder of Black people and the undeniable power and life of Black community. We watch not only as Black victims come forward, demanding justice, but also as the living Black community rally together and fight for the justice that the systems of America refuse to give them. 

That is an honest story. One where (1) those in the margins are the target, (2) the systems of America empower the monsters in the dark, (3) the thing we should fear is not just a moment of suffering, but something that actively hunts us by design, and (4), the only weapon we truly have is the strength of intimate community. 

An honest horror story not only reminds those in the margins of what survival looks like, but reminds those outside of it of the systems that are begging them to become monsters. And we need more of that. Not because shame is the goal, but because honest reflection on the darkest parts of our world enable all of us to refuse to play the role that ancient oppressors assigned for us. The marginalized do not have to fight alone, and the privileged do not have to hunt them.

Today is Friday the 13th and I honestly don't think there could be a more fitting time for this conversation, or for me to share my passion to tell these types of stories. As Left Unread, our first publication—Cry, Voidbringer— is going to be a dark fantasy that critically examines the reality of colonialism and how it impacts marginalized people and recruits us to participate in our own oppression. Our second—Devil of the Deep—is a fantasy that takes a look at the impact of colonial religion and what it looks like to wrestle through our own conditioning so that we can protect the world from the darkness we were raised to worship. And I am excited to share that, while I can’t give specifics yet, we are working to sign two additional projects. One is a very heavy dystopian that I think will speak to a lot of the questions and objections we are all wrestling through in the real world right now. And the second, a Black horror that dives right into the type of honest storytelling I described in this blog. 

My hope is that, as a publishing community, we can continue to champion the kind of storytelling that forces readers to wrestle with the world honestly. And if I have anything to say about it—which I obviously do—plenty of that will come through the medium of Black horror. So if you are a Black horror writer, please keep our community in mind when you are looking for a home for your stories. I want to read them and I want to champion you, whether that looks like publishing together or not. I am in your corner. 

To everyone else, I have two asks: 

First, help us to champion these kinds of stories more effectively. If you are not Black, you may not know what it is like to grow up watching horror stories erase you and murder you as a plot device, all while cosplaying as the center of a story that was built off of your own suffering, but I hope that this blog helped you to understand just how critical it is that stories told from our eyes exist. This genre has the power to force readers to wrestle with the scariest parts of our society and the scariest parts of themselves, but if we want that wrestling to push the world in a better direction, we need more of those stories to be told by us. We need our voices. 

You can help this community to find and champion more of these stories by subscribing right now. You can do that for free, but if you have the means, I do want to ask you to subscribe for $5, $12 or even $25 a month. That money doesnt just help us to make this work more sustainable, but it actually helps us to fund the projects we are looking to publish. The publishing process is incredibly expensive and we refuse to put out any projects we cannot champion as effectively as a traditional publisher can. So help us to champion more stories like I am describing above by throwing a few dollars a month into our budget. 

The second thing I want to ask you to do is to help champion other publishing communities. While I am immeasurably proud of what Left Unread is accomplishing, we are not the only ones doing this work, nor can the work be done by us alone. And it just so happens that there is another publishing community right here at Bindery who is specifically looking to champion women in horror. Which will not only include Black women, but Indigenous women and women of other racial/marginalized identities. 

Boozhoo Books is run by Naomi Darling (tiktok.com/@fromthemixedupdesk). They are actively working toward acquiring their first horror book and I would love to see them empowered to publish even more once that one is done and ready to be championed. So head over to: boozhoo.binderybooks.com and subscribe. Even if you can’t afford to invest in another community financially, subscribing for free DOES help. So take the thirty seconds to hand over your email and help an Indigenous woman fight for change. 

Thanks for being here and drop your favorite horror book in the comments!

Also, please make sure you join the discord community so we can chat more regularly!