Sycorax's Daughters
Sycorax's Daughters

Author: Kinitra Dechaun Brooks

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 9781941958445

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A 2018 Bram Stoker Award Finalist Thought-provoking, powerful, and revealing, this anthology is composed of 28 dark stories and 14 poems written by African-American women writers. The tales of what scares, threatens, and shocks them will enlighten and entertain readers. The works delve into demons and shape-shifters from "How to Speak to the Bogeyman" and "Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight" to far future offerings such as "The Malady of Need". These pieces cover vampires, ghosts, and mermaids, as well as the unexpected price paid by women struggling for freedom and validation in the past. Contributors include: Tiffany Austin, Tracey Baptiste, Regina N. Bradley, Patricia E. Canterbury, Crystal Connor, Joy M. Copeland, Amber Doe, Tish Jackson, Valjeanne Jeffers, Tenea D. Johnson, R. J. Joseph, A. D. Koboah Nicole Givens Kurtz, Kai Leakes, A. J. Locke, Carole McDonnell, Dana T. McKnight , LH Moore, L. Penelope, Zin E. Rocklyn , Eden Royce, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Andrea Vocab Sanderson, Nicole D. Sconiers, Cherene Sherrard, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Sheree Renée Thomas, Lori Titus, Tanesha Nicole Tyler, Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, L. Marie Wood, K. Ceres Wright, and Deana Zhollis.

Searching for Sycorax
Searching for Sycorax

Author: Kinitra D. Brooks

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0813584647

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Searching for Sycorax highlights the unique position of Black women in horror as both characters and creators. Kinitra D. Brooks creates a racially gendered critical analysis of African diasporic women, challenging the horror genre’s historic themes and interrogating forms of literature that have often been ignored by Black feminist theory. Brooks examines the works of women across the African diaspora, from Haiti, Trinidad, and Jamaica, to England and the United States, looking at new and canonized horror texts by Nalo Hopkinson, NK Jemisin, Gloria Naylor, and Chesya Burke. These Black women fiction writers take advantage of horror’s ability to highlight U.S. white dominant cultural anxieties by using Africana folklore to revise horror’s semiotics within their own imaginary. Ultimately, Brooks compares the legacy of Shakespeare’s Sycorax (of The Tempest) to Black women writers themselves, who, deprived of mainstream access to self-articulation, nevertheless influence the trajectory of horror criticism by forcing the genre to de-centralize whiteness and maleness.

The Daughter's Return
The Daughter's Return

Author: Caroline Rody

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-04-12

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0195350030

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The Daughter's Return offers a close analysis of an emerging genre in African-American and Caribbean fiction produced by women writers who make imaginative returns to their ancestral pasts. Considering some of the defining texts of contemporary fiction--Toni Morrison's Beloved, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, and Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven--Rody discusses their common inclusion of a daughter who returns to the site of her people's founding trauma of slavery through memory or magic. Rody treats these texts as allegorical expressions of the desire of writers newly emerging into cultural authority to reclaim their difficult inheritance, and finds a counter plot of heroines' encounters with women of other racial and ethnic groups running through these works.

Hag-Seed
Hag-Seed

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Hogarth

Published: 2016-10-11

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0804141304

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved author of The Handmaid’s Tale reimagines Shakespeare’s final, great play, The Tempest, in a gripping and emotionally rich novel of passion and revenge. “A marvel of gorgeous yet economical prose, in the service of a story that’s utterly heartbreaking yet pierced by humor, with a plot that retains considerable subtlety even as the original’s back story falls neatly into place.”—The New York Times Book Review Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. Now he’s staging aTempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, but it will also heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge, which, after twelve years, arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own. Praise for Hag-Seed “What makes the book thrilling, and hugely pleasurable, is how closely Atwood hews to Shakespeare even as she casts her own potent charms, rap-composition included. . . . Part Shakespeare, part Atwood, Hag-Seed is a most delicate monster—and that’s ‘delicate’ in the 17th-century sense. It’s delightful.”—Boston Globe “Atwood has designed an ingenious doubling of the plot of The Tempest: Felix, the usurped director, finds himself cast by circumstances as a real-life version of Prospero, the usurped Duke. If you know the play well, these echoes grow stronger when Felix decides to exact his revenge by conjuring up a new version of The Tempest designed to overwhelm his enemies.”—Washington Post “A funny and heartwarming tale of revenge and redemption . . . Hag-Seed is a remarkable contribution to the canon.”—Bustle

The Boatman's Daughter
The Boatman's Daughter

Author: Andy Davidson

Publisher: MCD x FSG Originals

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0374720940

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"Go read Andy Davidson’s lush nightmare, The Boatman’s Daughter. It put an arrow through my head and heart.” —Paul Tremblay, author of Growing Things "Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose . . . A stunning supernatural Southern Gothic." —Kirkus (starred) Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe. With the heady mythmaking of Neil Gaiman and the heartrending pacing of Joe Hill, Andy Davidson spins a thrilling tale of love and duty, of loss and discovery. The Boatman's Daughter is a gorgeous, horrifying novel, a journey into the dark corners of human nature, drawing our worst fears and temptations out into the light.

Zong!
Zong!

Author: M. NourbeSe Philip

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2008-09-23

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0819568767

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A haunting lifeline between archive and memory, law and poetry

Redemption in Indigo
Redemption in Indigo

Author: Karen Lord

Publisher: Del Rey

Published: 2024-06-11

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0593724399

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The enchanting tale of mischief and myth—inspired by West African folklore—that became a fantasy classic, from the award-winning author of The Blue, Beautiful World Paama is a marvelous cook who’s had the bad fortune to marry Ansige. He was the least eligible bachelor in his village: self-centered, foolish, and food-obsessed. Paama has had enough of this miserable life with her gluttonous husband, and so leaves him to return to her old life with her family. But Paama does not know that this is the beginning of a remarkable adventure. Because the Undying Ones are watching her. These spirits observe the follies of mortal life . . . and sometimes meddle and make mischief. One of these beings presents her with a magical artifact known as the Chaos Stick, which he says is “great for stirring things up.” As Paama gets to know the powers of this marvelous gift, she learns that the Chaos Stick was stolen from a rival spirit, who decides to stir up some trouble of his own. But mastering this magical artifact is only the beginning of Paama’s quest. Although Paama has been granted great power by the Undying Ones, her real journey is to find the magic that lies within herself.

Scary Out There
Scary Out There

Author: Jonathan Maberry

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-08-30

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1481450727

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Multiple Bram Stoker Award–winning author Jonathan Maberry compiles more than twenty stories and poems—written by members of the Horror Writers Association—in this terrifying collection about our worst fears. What scares you? Things that go bump in the night? Being irreversibly different? A brutal early death? The unknown? This collection contains stories and poetry by renowned writers—all members of the Horror Writers Association—about what they fear most. These spooky stories include mermaids, ghosts, and personal demons, and are edited by Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker award winner and author of the Rot & Ruin series. Contributors are Linda Addison, Ilsa J. Bick, Kendare Blake, Zac Brewer, Rachel Caine, Christopher Golden, Nancy Holder, Ellen Hopkins, Josh Malerman, Cherie Priest, Madeleine Roux, Carrie Ryan, Jade Shames, Brendan Shusterman, Neal Shusterman, Lucy A. Snyder, Marge Simon, R. L. Stine, Rachel Tafoya, Steve Rasnic Tem, Tim Waggoner, and Brenna Yovanoff.

Close Kin and Distant Relatives
Close Kin and Distant Relatives

Author: Susana M. Morris

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0813935512

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The "black family" in the United States and the Caribbean often holds contradictory and competing meanings in public discourse: on the one hand, it is a site of love, strength, and support; on the other hand, it is a site of pathology, brokenness, and dysfunction that has frequently called forth an emphasis on conventional respectability if stability and social approval are to be achieved. Looking at the ways in which contemporary African American and black Caribbean women writers conceptualize the black family, Susana Morris finds a discernible tradition that challenges the politics of respectability by arguing that it obfuscates the problematic nature of conventional understandings of family and has damaging effects as a survival strategy for blacks. The author draws on African American studies, black feminist theory, cultural studies, and women’s studies to examine the work of Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and Sapphire, showing how their novels engage the connection between respectability and ambivalence. These writers advocate instead for a transgressive understanding of affinity and propose an ethic of community support and accountability that calls for mutual affection, affirmation, loyalty, and respect. At the core of these transgressive family systems, Morris reveals, is a connection to African diasporic cultural rites such as dance, storytelling, and music that help the fictional characters to establish familial connections.