Horror has not traditionally been kind to characters of color. Black characters , if they showed up at all, often showed up as background or side characters—the token Black sidekick, the best friend, the “Magical Negro” with special wisdom or powers, or the notorious “First to Die”. But Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell's 2024 anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One challenges all of this and more and is sure to become a key text in the Black horror renaissance working to correct that injustice.
The stories included share one crucial characteristic: a young Black female protagonist who must survive but is otherwise a sprawling survey of horror’s various subsections. Every story is refreshed by the Black female gaze. L.L. McKinney’s “Harvester”, for example, is nightmarish Americana about a very unusual cornfield. Zakiya Dalila Harris’s “TMI” is a technophobic satire about privacy and identity. And Evans’s own “The Brides of Devil’s Bayou” pulls only the best tropes from old-school Southern Gothic tales. “Queeniums for Greenium!” by Brittney Morris features a cult-ish smoothie MLM with a deadly level of blind faith that had my heart pounding and my eyes watering with laughter. And despite The Black Girl Survives in This One being billed as young-adult literature, stories like Monica Brashears’s “The Skittering Thing” are pure adult-grade nightmare fuel.
The best of them pose a question that underlines the entire anthology: Is surviving the same thing as having a happy ending?
Ihnheritance.
Horror, as a whole, has got some deep, deep roots in oral storytelling traditions—myths, folktales, and fairytales—all of which have always contained elements of the unknown, the grotesque, and the supernatural. Most mainstream Western horror traces its roots to the Gothic tales of the late 18th century. In these Gothic novels, ghosts, soulless monsters, and unsettling terrains filled readers with feelings of foreboding, unease, terror, and fear. Western horror has long been obsessed with otherness, because it sits at the juncture of Western imperialism and the creation of a “Monstrous Other” as an integral feature of 18th and 19th century Western speculative fiction.
Much of this fiction would become a place where white European’s fears, desires, cultural anxieties, and fantasies played out. European colonialism needed to create “monsters” out of the people being colonized as it reinforced the idea that Black bodies should only exist in service to whiteness, and that Black people were worth less than those who got to survive to the end.
But what happens when the group that was Othered, gets to tell their side of the story? Works by authors like Octavia Butler and Nnedi Okorafor did just that, confronting legacies of colonization, slavery, and systemic oppression head on, letting readers know this ain't just a horror story; it’s a profound exploration of ancestry and the haunting echoes of history that continue to shape present realities and allowing readers to grapple with uncomfortable truths about race, power, and, of course, survival.
Cemetery Dance Party.
What I find fascinating about Black horror is it allows us to ask questions about the unique role Blackness plays in reshaping almost every piece of speculative worldbuilding. What if a Stepford Wives-esque tale of seeking the "perfection" was created by a black woman, as in Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, the story of a family planning to move to the Black utopia of Liberty in hopes of finding a community of like-minded people only to discover a terrible secret about the town and its founders. Thrilling with insightful social commentary, One of Our Kind explores how freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other. Or how does the meaning of vampirism and immortality shift as it intersects with race, as in House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson—which I've mentioned before—a bloody, sapphic fever dream of a novel.
And Black horror allows Black writers to claim our place as architects of the Southern Gothic as well, bringing attention to a distinctly Black Southern Gothic. No one better represents this subgenre today than two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. Her novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Let Us Descend beautifully blend the supernatural and the real-world horrors of the rural Southern Black poor, while also showing how Black ancestral folkways and traditions can be tapped as resources for transformation and empowerment.
And Donyae Coles's Midnight Rooms, the story of an orphaned, biracial Orabella who's on the cusp of spinsterhood before settling into a marriage with the devilishly appealing Elias Blakersby. Once the story settles in the gloomy Korringhill Manor, Orabella endures long nights locked in her quarters interspersed with animalistic revelries, fever dreams and secrets—any Gothic fiction fan will feel right at home.
No piece about black horror would be complete without mentioning literally the entire bibliography of Victor LaValle, a modern master of magical suspense. His works introduce readers to eerie locals and seemingly impossible situations, and make for one utterly unforgettable reading experience. I'd personally recommend starting with Changeling, a modern-day tale of terror rooted in ancient myth and folklore, brimming with magical revelations and emotional truths. The story follows a man named Apollo whose seemingly postpartum wife commits a horrific act and vanishes. This series of events begins Apollo’s quest to find a wife and child who are nothing like he imagined. His odyssey takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he'd lost forever.
Changeling is such a mesmerizing, dark fairy tale full of magic and loss, myth and mystery, love and madness, ideal, in my opinion, for fans of Shae Ernshaw's A History of Wild Places.
Black horror has traversed age categories as well, resulting in more Black horror in young-adult and middle-grade fiction. Justina Ireland is a staple in Black YA horror, and her book Dread Nation stands out for its unique blend of historical setting with the fantastic. Black YA horror continues to span the horror subgenres, from ghostly hauntings to urban legends. Several examples include: The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass, the story of a young boy who can’t decide what’s worse: being a medium forced to watch the dead play out their last moments or being at the mercy of racist teachers as one of the few Black students at St. Clair Prep. The Weight Of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson, which follows a biracial teenager as her Georgia high school hosts its first integrated prom, an event that ends in bloodshed. Other examples include Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado, The Getaway by Lamar Giles, The Undead Truth of Us by Britney Lewis, The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson, and Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury.
Black Pride.
What makes The Black Girl Survives in This One a welcome addition is its subversion of the idea of the Final Girl, which has typically been a virtuous white teen girl or white woman in her 20's who defeats the powerful villain and lives to tell the tale. The anthology moves Black teen girls from their conventional sidekick roles to the center of their own stories. And doing so provides a level of healing for both Black writers and Black readers, highlighting how vital it is to see narratives of Black women and girls surviving in a world where anti-Black violence and violence against Black women and girls is still a true life horror story.
Many of the stories in the anthology hint at the underlying terror of Black girlhood, the psychological trauma and the hyper-vigilance Black women and girls face on a daily basis, in just fighting to be heard, seen, or believed. There is a natural survival instinct underlying how Black women and girls already move through the world that gives depth to our roles as final girls. It’s powerful to see yourself survive in a world that has not always valued your life.
And it may sound hyperbolic, but in this way, Black final girls are revolutionary. Something poet Lucille Clifton once wrote about Black womanhood rings true here: “Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.”
The anthology really has something for everyone, from a classic zombie horror in “Cemetery Dance Party” by Saraciea J. Fennell to a spooky twist on Afrofuturism in “Welcome Back to The Cosmos” by Kortney Nash. And even though we know the Black girl survives, the end is still a shock, because the real question is how.
Through these narratives, these writers confront historical traumas, redefine the nature of monstrosity, and celebrate the power of community. They remind us that while horror may arise from fear and the unknown, it can also be a powerful vehicle for exploring identity, resilience, and hope. In horror, I see my own fear and terror in a world beyond my control reflected back at me. And though these tales, I'm able to find a powerful space to imagine fighting back and making it out. I'm able to imagine survival.
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