How a Black literary critic learned to love Black horror

Good morning, and welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter.

I’m Boris Kachka, the books editor at the Los Angeles Times, and as Halloween and Día de Muertos creep ever closer, I’m thinking about the simple pleasures of a good jump scare.

One of the clearest trends of the last 25 years has been the increased popularity and richness of speculative fiction — and all its subgenres — as a medium for telling the stories of people whom literature had long marginalized. This week, Times contributor Paula L. Woods took on one of its most exciting manifestations — Black horror — and one of its pioneers, Tananarive Due.

From her 1995 debut “The Between” through her new novel “The Reformatory,” Due has treated speculative horror as inseparable from the terrors of the real world. She has also extended the legacy of her family — civil-rights activists who supported her in pursuing fiction that has always been considered less-than by the arbiters of literature.

Due teaches a popular course at UCLA called “Sunken Place” — its title borrowed from a plot twist in film director Jordan Peele’s defining breakthrough of Black horror, “Get Out.” Peele, incidentally, edited a new anthology of the genre, “Out There Screaming,” which includes a chilling story by Due.

Woods knows all about the potential of genre fiction to shine a light on forgotten stories: She is a veteran critic and author of detective thrillers including “Inner City Blues,” which Time magazine recently listed among the 100 best mystery/thriller books of all time. I asked her about her journey into the more frightful corners of Black fiction.

“I had never been a fan of horror,” she confesses. “I don’t like roller coasters, I don’t like haunted houses, and I have steered away most of my life from that kind of adrenaline rush. God knows I write crime fiction, but that’s another story.”

(Gallery / Saga Press)

Her evolution began with Due’s “The Between.” “I realized horror can be about a lot of things other than what scares you,” Woods says. “And Black horror fiction is often grounded in the African American experience — slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and other existential threats to the race. That’s what kind of fortifies me for whatever the horrors are.”

In horror written by people of color — ranging from Stephen Graham Jones to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, whom Woods profiled earlier this year — “it’s about the culture as well as the monster, and sometimes the monster comes from within the culture.”

And of course, there was “Get Out.” “I laughed through three-quarters of that movie,” Woods says, “because the racism and the inside jokes about Black virility were hilarious to me — which set me up for the horror that was to come.”

Ultimately, the bar for horror that is worth Woods’ time and jangled nerves is the same as that for any other genre: “It has to do more than just scare me. It has to teach me something, move me in some way, make me question or think about the world differently.”

Another recent work that met the standard was Alyssa Cole’s “When No One Is Watching,” a thriller about Black people vanishing from a Brooklyn neighborhood whose real subject is “the horror of gentrification.” If you’re looking for more, check out Woods’ sidebar on six works of Black horror — which boldly lists “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison.

What do you think? Is Morrison’s classic a work of horror? What are your go-to horror books? Let us know by dropping an email at bookclub@latimes.com.

Next Book Club

(Flatiron Books / Random House)

If you think artificial intelligence is a horror story in the making, take solace in the knowledge that some of its architects are working with AI to improve society. On Nov. 14, the L.A. Times Book Club will host a discussion with two of them.

Joy Buolamwini, author of “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines,” is renowned for uncovering the “coded bias” in facial-recognition technology through her work in the MIT Media Lab. Fei-Fei Li’s “The Worlds I See: : Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI,” recounts her work at Stanford University to advance AI technology and advocate for a “human-centered” approach. (See Times contributor Martin Wolk’s profile of Li for more on her personal story.)

Li and Buolamwini will speak to Times audio head Jazmín Aguilera, with Times technology columnist Brian Merchant joining the discussion, in a virtual event on Nov. 14 at 6 p.m. (Pacific).

The talk will be livestreamed on YouTube, Facebook and X, formerly Twitter. Sign up on Eventbrite for direct links and signed books.

The Week in Books

“Abject panic” over AI. Books about AI are proliferating just as authors and publishers are grappling with its potential to transform their industry. Company Town reporter Brian Contreras has the full run-down on the interrelated lawsuits currently pushing back against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, over alleged violations of copyright.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s appearance at 92NY was canceled this week over his political views of the Israel-Hamas war, part of a flurry of open letters and cancellations upending the literary world.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Open letters and canceled events. Last time we met, I followed up with Nathan Thrall about the difficulties of promoting his book, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” about injustices in the West Bank, after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Since then, his tour has been curtailed by cancellations in London and across several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles. “The community is deeply polarised,” Andrea Grossman, the director of Writers Bloc, the nonprofit that was to host the L.A. event, explained to the Guardian. “I hope we can have it in person soon, when this dies down.”

It was neither the first cancellation nor the last. As Times reporter Carlos de Loera and I wrote, the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled a prize presentation to Palestinian author Adania Shibli, leading 1,000 authors and publishers to sign an open letter protesting the move. And this week, L.A. author Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s event at New York’s 92NY was canceled at the last minute — a move spurred by his signing of a different open letter as well as his support for the pro-Palestinian BDS movement. That cancellation led a flurry of authors to pull out of 92NY events, causing the Jewish-founded cultural center to cancel the literary season at its Unterberg Poetry Center; at least two of the center’s staff members resigned.

Letters, cancellations, firings and demotions are raging through the arts, Hollywood included. Complex issues of life, death, religion and politics are being hashed out by social-media algorithms and celebrity accounts. It’s a moment that cries out for reasoned debates — if only some venues would host them.

Britney Spears. Mitt Romney. John Stamos. These odd bedfellows all shared one thing this week: a publication date. Spears released “The Woman in Me,” finally telling the full story of the conservatorship that confined her for 13 years. At The Times, editor Christie D’Zurilla had your takeaways, while contributor Julianne Escobedo Shepherd smartly teased out the Gothic tones of Spears’ tragic story. That review sent me back to a Vulture story from last year that peeled back the awful history of the Spears family — a multigenerational legacy of abuse. See our full coverage of the memoir here.

Actor, musician and writer John Stamos has written a new memoir, “If You Would Have Told Me.”

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

On a lighter and tastier note, Stamos invited Vanessa Franko, The Times entertainment team’s audience engagement editor and resident Greek American, over to his house to dish about his new memoir, “If You Would Have Told Me,” while she taught him how to make delectable fasolakia.

One last celebrity bio for the week. Matt Singer’s “Opposable Thumbs” is a complicated love song for Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the Chicago movie critics and improbable TV stars who influenced a generation of culture geeks, including Times contributor Chris Vognar, who spoke to Singer about the secret of Siskel & Ebert’s success (in short: not getting along).

Elsewhere in the paper: contributor Laurie Hertzel reviews “Wavewalker,” Suzanne Heywood’s harrowing memoir of growing up traveling the world on a boat (not as fun as it sounds). “Julia,” Sandra Newman’s estate-authorized reboot of George Orwell’s “1984,” is better than the original, according to contributor Bethanne Patrick. And critic Ellen Akins reads the acclaimed author Jeanette Winterson’s surprising new collection of existential ghost stories, “Night Side of the River.”

Events around town

Angie Kim, the author, most recently, of “Happiness Falls,” will team up with Gabrielle Zevin, author of the mega-bestseller “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” (and a Book Club alum) for an appearance at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica on Oct. 30 at 6 p.m.

The inimitable polymath Reggie Watts takes over Vroman’s in Pasadena on Nov. 3 at 6 p.m. to expand on his already expansive book, “Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again.”

Comedian Aparna Nancherla, last seen sitting down in Los Feliz with Times contributor Meredith Maran to unpack impostor syndrome and her memoir, “Unreliable Narrator,” unpacks some more at the neighborhood’s Skylight Books on Nov. 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Skylight will also sponsor a marquee, must-see event at the Barnsdall Gallery: Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, the author of the forthcoming nonfiction book “To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul,” will speak with fellow poet Morgan Parker, in an event co-hosted by ALOUD and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m.

Bookstore Faves

Every couple of weeks, we’ll ask an L.A. bookseller what they’re selling and what they’re loving. This time: Malik Muhammad, co-owner of Malik Books, with locations in Baldwin Hills and Culver City.

Malik and April Muhammad, co-owners of Malik Books, in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall, in 2022.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

What’s flying off your shelves?

We just hosted Cedric The Entertainer; his debut book, “Flipping Boxcars,” is a gripping page-turner of hustle and laughter. But what’s flying off the shelves constantly no matter the time or month is our 60 feet of shelves of African American and diverse children books. Children are 100% of our future.

What are your customers asking for?

The phones are ringing and the streets are talking about Jada Pinkett Smith’s drama-filled book, “Worthy.” Controversy sells, especially when it is some juicy marriage drama.

What are you recommending and why?

I am a nonfiction reader, and one book that’s thought-provoking and mentally liberating is Michael Harriot’s “Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America.” There are always two sides to every story, and it is time for the Black side to be told.

What are you looking forward to that isn’t out yet?

Early this month my most anticipated book was released: “The Streets Win: 50 Years of Hip-Hop Greatness,” co-authored by LL Cool J. My escape from all the crazies in the world is a good sci-fi book. I can’t wait for Nnedi Okorafor’s new one, “Like Thunder: The Desert Magician’s Duology: Book 2.”

A Closing Note

There’s a reason you’re seeing more of the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter in your inbox. To serve our readers and Book Club members more frequently, I’ve stepped in to share duties with Donna Wares, supplementing her coverage of book-club authors, common reads and California-centric stories with news and analysis from across The Times’ books section and beyond. So you’ll see my byline in every other edition, and you’ll have more to read on Saturday mornings.