The Quill #7: Recommended Reads #5

As summer begins, I’m back to reading multiethnic Gothic horror for my neverending Ph.D. dissertation. At the top of my list is the latest book from Tananarive Due, The Reformatory, since I loved her earlier novel The Good House. In addition to being an award-winning author, Due teaches Black horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA as a continuing lecturer. I first learned about her while watching the documentary miniseries Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (available on Shudder and based on the book by Robin R. Means Coleman), which she co-produced and appeared in. Her whipsmart analysis of the hallmarks of Black horror had me running to the bookstore to add her to my TBR (to be read) pile. I’m so glad I did.

In The Good House, Angela returns to her hometown of Sacajawea two years after a tragedy there ripped her family apart. She discovers that others have suffered losses, and she begins to suspect that something sinister and supernatural may be behind it all —  something that her grandmother may have battled back in 1929. Due’s work is fast-paced, deeply written, and brilliantly symbolic of the horrors of racism, violence, and dehumanization that the African American community has withstood since the first ship of enslaved people arrived on our shores in 1619. The Reformatory promises to be just as compelling, centering around a young man named Robbie who has been sent to a reformatory school in the Jim Crow South, where, according to the cover copy, “he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.” If you love Gothic horror and want to see a master at work, give Tananarive Due a try.