On this episode of Our Body Politic, host Farai Chideya is celebrating the spooky season with Black women creators of horror. First we hear her conversation with Louisiana-based writer and director Zandashé Brown on expanding the canon of Black Southern gothic horror. Then Farai speaks with Tonia Ransom, author and creator of the award-winning horror fiction podcast Nightlight. We round out the show with award-winning author Tananarive Due talking about her newest book, ‘The Reformatory.’
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This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. It's time for spine chilling stories filled with terror and dread. And no, I'm not talking about politics, at least not right now. We are speaking with Black women creators, pushing the boundaries of the Black horror genre. I'm joined first by film director Zandashé Brown. This eerie music we're hearing is from her 2018 short film, Blood Runs Down, which was inspired by her life. Let's listen to a clip from that film.
FILM CLIP [00:01:44] There's something else. Mama there’s something in the house. We have to go now.
Farai Chideya [00:01:51] Born and bred in southern Louisiana, Zandashé's work explores Southern Gothic horror through a Black femme lens. We speak with her about her different films, including her recent work with AMC, Bride Before You. Zandashé, thanks for coming on Our Body Politic.
Zandashé Brown [00:02:08] Thank you so much for having me.
Farai Chideya [00:02:10] So I watched Bride Before You, which you directed in AMC's Horror Noire Anthology, and it had so many interesting and compelling themes about colourism and class in the Black community, mother-daughter, relationships, marriage, patriarchy. There was a lot in there. How do you feel about having directed that work as just one of the things you've done?
Zandashé Brown [00:02:33] Yeah, I mean, it was a beautifully written story that just resonated with me in so many ways, and this was my first time adapting work that I hadn't written. But it's focus on the sort of mother daughter relationship at play, because I come from a very matriarchal community where I was raised by my mom, my grandmother, my aunts, great aunts. It was something that felt very familiar to me and that I felt like I could relate to. And my work.
Farai Chideya [00:03:05] I consume a lot of short form horror and science fiction, and I hadn't read the story before I watched your adaptation, but in the story, someone who might be described as a monster is the narrator. And obviously once you do a film, it's got a different perspective. What's it like to adapt someone else's horror to create horror on screen?
Zandashé Brown [00:03:31] It's a really beautiful and interesting collaboration in which you don't always have the luxury of speaking or connecting to the person that you're collaborating with. But it's just… it's such a process of picking apart the work and revisiting and rereading over and over again. Although I have to say for this, what I did for the script was so similar to what I've done whenever I've switched from my writer's hat to director's hat, I look at this piece as if I haven't seen it before. And I've had a similar thing with other people reading work that I've written and pulling out themes or approaches that I hadn't been privy to but made complete sense when they pointed it out. You know, it was really special. It was really special to take these themes that someone else was exploring, but to also put myself into them and to see, you know, like, how do I relate to this thing and how can I shape it based off of my own memory.
Farai Chideya [00:04:28] What is horror noir to you? You know, horror infused with the Black experience.
Zandashé Brown [00:04:35] You know, I think we are in a place of figuring that out right now. What is Black Horror? I grew up on horror films, and most of the ones that I grew up on did not have people that looked like me in them. And so this is a very new era that we're in. I remember being so excited whenever I saw the trailer for Get Out, and I’d already been working in that space, but it was comforting to know that I was walking into an industry that was already interested to some degree and seeing Black people in horror films. I think what's interesting right now is that a lot of the Black Horror you see tends to center the experiences of racism, which is absolutely valid. And, you know, it's definitely a part of our experience as Black people. But what I'm really interested in and what I want my work to do is to explore our interiority as Black people. I look at films by directors who I really respect, like Ari Aster, Hereditary, that telling of a sort of family tragedy, of what it feels like to sort of be losing your mind and to deal with intense grief. You know, that that director wasn't tasked with having to explain anything about, you know, experiences of racism or other forms of oppression in that way. I've been in so many meetings where you get the sense that a lot of producers are just looking for more Jordan Peele's to replicate the things that he's already done. And, you know, so much of my work only has Black people in it. I'm interested in our experiences and our exchanges amongst each other and what we go through psychologically, and that may or may not include racism. So yeah, I think we're still shaping Black horror. And, you know, I think so much of it is just understanding. Horror is so rooted in vulnerability and fear. And so to understand Black horror, we have to understand Black vulnerability.
Farai Chideya [00:06:40] So how do you decide what to bring into your work?
Zandashé Brown [00:06:43] I had a mentor years ago when I was pretty young in my journey who I was pitching a project to, and she essentially told me, look, if I want to read bell hooks, I have her literature. What is the story? And that really resonated with me because of course, it's important to explore those themes in the time that we're in, where there's so many battles to be had. But the way that people really latch on to it is always through character, through deepening understanding of character and building out someone's history and their relationships and seeing them transform in some way. And so for me, that has to come first. You know, I have to believe that this is a full person and not a representation of an idea, because then, you know, I pull away from the idea and the character. But it's also something that I look for and in films and in books and any form of storytelling.
Farai Chideya [00:07:45] You also did a 2018 short film, Blood Runs Down. It also has a mother daughter theme to it. So tell us a little bit about that film and again, why the mother daughter relationship often shows up in horror.
Zandashé Brown [00:08:01] Blood Runs Down was my first short film. I was definitely still figuring out what it meant to make a film and be a director. But so much of that was me unpacking my own relationship and analyzing my mother's mental breakdown and the time that I wrote that script. I hadn't spoken to her for about five years or so because she was dealing with psychosis, so it was just me trying to find a way to honor her memory and my memory. You know, it was weird to grieve someone who was still living. So that was my first attempt at processing this huge thing that had happened. It's such a coming of age period in my life. And I remember when I was done making the film and it started getting some attention, I was just like, I don't know that I fully articulated myself in the way that I wanted to. And I think that it's always like that as a creator, you know, there's always something more you can say or a different way to say it. And yeah, I think my work since then, my short films and Horror Noire have all been opportunities for me to kind of approach that theme from a different angle and with, you know, more growth and life experiences. And so much has happened since then. You know, the pandemic, the early pandemic days, I should say, gave me a completely different perspective of that, too. And so it's just it's one of those things that keeps coming back to me. And you're right, it does keep showing up in horror films, too, which is so interesting. You know, when we think of genres, they all help us process different things and horror is a means of processing fear and grief for so many people. And I guess it's just evident that a lot of creators and clearly a lot of audiences, given the success or processing a lot of grief or some level of change with their parents, but especially mothers and daughters, it's just a recurring thing we see. One of my favorite films, one of my earliest favorite films, was Carrie. That ended up being a really big influence as well on everything.
Farai Chideya [00:10:22] Oh, yeah. Carrie's got a lot of blood, a lot of questions about what is a woman's identity. How do you stand up for yourself? Yeah, I really… I enjoyed Carrie, too. It's a classic. And along those lines, tell us about your film, Benediction.
Zandashé Brown [00:10:37] Yes. So I. Benediction. I've been so excited to make another short film following Blood Runs Down. It is set in the Black Baptist Church, and it follows Rosalie, who has this young woman who's on a solo healing road trip throughout the South, and she stumbles across this ad for a faith healing ceremony at this church. And it brings her there. But, you know, if you've ever been to a Baptist church, it's high energy and it can be very powerful and intense. And so it is for her, essentially the line between the natural and the spiritual world starts to blend and she questions what she's really walked into.
[FILM CLIP]
This film I wrote in the pandemic early days when I was really navigating how much healing costs and costing it is to constantly seek healing. And for this character in particular, you know, she's looking for remedy after remedy after remedy. When the true remedy was to allow herself to be consumed by the pain that she was feeling and give it a form of release. And this church gave her an opportunity to do that through the act of praise and worship.
Farai Chideya [00:12:04] Let's actually listen to a clip from your short film, Benediction.
Film Clip [00:12:09] Your word speaks of healing and restoration. And we thank you for the miracles you performed. Perform your miracle today. Heal us of our ailments. Lead us home. Lead us home.
Farai Chideya [00:12:34] So Zandashé. I find horror this wonderful counterpoint to everyday moral failures of humanity and disappointments and climate anxiety and all sorts of anxiety. So do you find horror in some ways grounding, even though many people just don't think about it that way?
Zandashé Brown [00:12:50] I do, and I think I'm still trying to understand why that is. But for as long as I can remember, I've gone to horror films for sort of comfort and relaxation. And I think part of it is the shared experience of watching a horror film or even telling a scary story that there's always this association of coziness and community and the ritual of bonding that has always pulled me in. But I do think it's very healthy for us to routinely and sort of ritualistically process what we're afraid of and why we're afraid of it. The horror tends to have, you know, a lot of the same themes, whether it's a fear of our own mortality or fear of exclusion or invasion, or of the other fear of the mind. Yeah, I think that as a country, we could definitely stand to sit with that a bit more. And while it may not be necessarily as grounding for some in the experience of watching the film. I think in your lived, you know, day to day reality, you're able to sort of name the fear. And so it's not just hovering above you, you know, you're conscious of a thing. So yeah, I won't force anyone. I have friends who are very adamant about not seeing horror films, and I'm really upset when I make a new one. But I, you know, I think everyone should try.
Farai Chideya [00:14:34] Yeah. Yeah. So Zandashé name one or two or three horror films that you would recommend somebody who was like, Yeah, I just don't think horror's that interesting.
Zandashé Brown [00:14:48] Let me think about that. Hereditary is definitely on my list and I know it's at this point such a film bro pick but you know I will sit in that confidently. I mean, I think it's just such a great example of how horror can tackle drama and tragedy. But I would also say Eve's Bayou, but I don't quite consider it a horror film. But it has some of the similar conventions.
Farai Chideya [00:15:16] And I would say Parasite is another movie like that. It's not technically a horror film, but it has some aspects of horror.
Zandashé Brown [00:15:23] Yeah, it has horrific themes and that horrific themes. And I think I would say like Carrie, honestly. MM Yeah. Oh, and this one is really fun. I've been subjecting a lot of people to this film. Like.
Farai Chideya [00:15:35] I like it “subjecting.”
Zandashé Brown [00:15:36] Yes, yes. It's a, it's a French dance horror film called Climax, and it's not quite traditional. It's a little on the experimental end, but I've sat people down to watch it and none of them have stopped.
Farai Chideya [00:15:51] Oh, okay. Yeah. Never heard of it. So I'm going to have to check that out. So as we are in the spooky season, what do you love – if you do love – about Halloween or the broader spooky season?
Zandashé Brown [00:16:06] I love everything about it. To be honest, the big part is I love being able to show people horror films. Yeah, they're a big part of where my role comes in, and I do that throughout the year. But, you know, I've seen so many of the same films over and over again, and the closest thing you can get to achieving that first time experience again is introducing someone else to a film you really love and watching them sort of process it in real time. So I love that. I love going on the tours and reading about haunted history and things and then just the act of storytelling being around a campfire if I have that opportunity.
Farai Chideya [00:16:49] I love it. So Zandashé Brown, Louisiana based writer and director, thanks for joining us today.
Zandashé Brown [00:16:55] Thank you so much.
Farai Chideya [00:16:57] We turn next to one of my favorite mediums for horror: podcasts. Joining me now is Tonia Ransom, author of the book Risen and creator of the award winning podcast Nightlight, which features horror written by Black writers and voiced by Black actors. She's also the creator of the audio thriller Afflicted, a series she describes as Lovecraft Country meets True Blood. Tonia, thanks for joining me.
Tonia Ransom [00:17:21] Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting.
Farai Chideya [00:17:24] A lot of people view horror as something that is to be avoided at all costs, sort of like, you know, their greatest fears that they don't want to confront. And for me, horror is a way to escape from some of the everyday realities that are uncomfortable and get into a space where I like having the shivers. Why do you like horror?
Tonia Ransom [00:17:45] First of all, I have four brothers, three of which are older than me. And my father really loved horror. So, of course, you know, me being a little sister, I had to kind of get in with my brothers. And, you know, I'm brave. I can watch horror. So, you know, kind of started off as a I'm going to be brave sort of thing. But then I realized that it really helped me make sense of the world. I didn't really understand it at the time. I was very young, you know. So of course, I didn't piece together that that is what I was doing. But it helped me feel more comfortable with the real horrors that I faced in the real world. You know, seeing how people dealt with these, you know, really big things in movies. And it just gave me some perspective, I guess.
Farai Chideya [00:18:23] Yeah. And so how did you decide to start Nightlight? You know, you were able to move into a direction where you're a creator and you've had season after season of Nightlight. You've had on some very established authors as well as ones who are up-and-coming as well as yourself. And I believe you had your son on one episode, right?
Tonia Ransom [00:18:41] He's actually on every season finale. This is the first year that he won't be in our season finale.
Farai Chideya [00:18:46] Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Because. Because I loved that. You know, I loved hearing his little kid's voice and your story. And over time, you know, obviously. So in any case, how did this all get started? How did you say “I can do this?”
Tonia Ransom [00:19:02] Well, originally I wanted to start a podcast before podcasts were even a thing. So I'm going to age myself a little bit. But do you remember back in the day where you could listen to Internet radio before like iPods were thing? So I started listening to old time radio shows and I was like, This would be really cool to revive this as a way of storytelling. And, you know, of course podcasts weren't a thing, and so I knew that I would have to, like, go to a radio station and be like, and be like please give me a chance. And I was a web developer at the time, so, you know, nobody was going to give me a chance. So I didn't think about it too seriously. And, you know, as time went on, podcasts became a thing. And I was like, Oh, that makes it a lot easier to do. I wanted to do an audio drama. So, you know, Afflicted is kind of like my baby because that's always been my dream is to do a full-cast audio drama. So Nightlight was kind of a stepping stone toward that because I knew that that was something that I could do financially and could also do, you know, in terms of like skill and talent, because I don't know what I was doing, you know, I just, you know, read a bunch of stuff about starting a podcast. But at the time there had been a report that came out from Fireside Fiction where they basically broke down the demographics of writers and the percentage of work that was published by different ethnicities and a bunch of different things. And at the time Black writers were about 3%, I think, of publications in that year. And of course, Black Americans are 13% of the population. So, you know, huge gap. And I belong to a writers group that's all Black writers. And we were kind of having a conversation on Slack about, you know, what barriers do you face in getting your work published? And, you know, the thing that was said over and over was editors were saying, Oh, this is too Black or this story is not Black enough. And they would hear it, you know, on the opposite extremes for the same story. So one editor resigned to Black and then another editor would say the same story was not Black enough. And, you know, these were all white editors, you know, that were saying this. And, you know, we talked about how frustrating it was that we couldn't just write about a haunted house. Or, you know, anything else. It had to have like some Blackness in it for an editor to actually want to publish the story. And so I wanted to start Nightlight as a way of showcasing that Black people can write about more than being Black. Believe it or not, we could just write about ghosts and, you know, things like that. So I really wanted to try to start to rectify some of that inequality that we were seeing in literature.
Farai Chideya [00:21:32] I think about Get Out being released in 2017, and there's definitely more of an understanding that Black Horror can go mainstream. But is there equity or anything close to it? Have things really changed since Get Out or not?
Tonia Ransom [00:21:48] You know, I would love to say that they have, and I think they have in some ways. But, you know, if you look at, you know, movies, for instance, you know, a lot of the Black Horror that's coming out right now is all Jordan Peele's stuff. You know, there's some other stuff, but it's like Hollywood. It's like, okay, you know, there's our token Black guy kind of thing. And, you know, I think Jordan is doing a great job of trying to, you know, like lift other people up and, you know, bring them along with him. But, you know, that's that's the thing that's been happening since movies were a thing is, you know, okay, I got my token Black person, you know, and, you know, even if you like, query an agent sometimes if you're writing a book, you know, I already have one Black client, like, you know, like, oh, do you ever say that about, you know, you already have one white client? Nobody ever says that. And we already have one white filmmaker. Nobody says that either. But you know that that's kind of where we are right now. You know, I think that the George Floyd protests were a really big deal. You know, there was this big push to uplift Black creators during those protests. And me and a lot of other Black creators got, you know, requests for general meetings to, you know, be staffed on shows and, you know, things like that. But nothing ever panned out for anybody that I talked to, basically, you know, it was a whole bunch of like, we want to talk to you guys about this and we want to hire you. But then, like it actually came to pulling the trigger on doing it, nobody really did.
Farai Chideya [00:23:11] Wet want to give the appearance of carrying.
Tonia Ransom [00:23:12] Yeah, And I feel like that's kind of where we are right now.
Farai Chideya [00:23:15] Mm hmm. Yeah, well, I mean, you have really done a lot. And, you know, as we're talking, you're wearing a t-shirt for afflicted your audio drama, and it is a multicast cinematic effort. Most of the shows I listen to, horror or science fiction are a single narrator reading a story. And the multicast stories that are more like an audio play are much more work. And so what was it like to move from doing a storytelling podcast like Nightlight to doing a multicast drama like Afflicted?
Tonia Ransom [00:23:50] You know, honestly, it wasn't a huge jump because for Night Light, most of our stories are single narrator, but for our season finale that we do on Halloween, those are all full cast audio dramas. So I'd already kind of been able to dip my toe into that. And, you know, like you mentioned earlier, my son is in a lot of those episodes, so I got some experience directing as well because, you know, child actor, you have to, you know, you have to give them a lot of direction. So it wasn't like a huge change for afflicted, but I still underestimated how much work it was going to be to do like a full show. That was a full cast thing. So that was a real a real struggle, but it was also a lot of fun and like recording with, you know, all of these professional voice actors, you know, not that I hadn't recorded with professional voice actors on Nightlight, but now I had like a whole cast and I had someone doing music to score. Yeah, each episode. And I don't know anything about music. I'm just like, Okay, this sounds good or This doesn't sound right, you know, kind of thing.
Farai Chideya [00:24:51] And as if that wasn't enough, you also have a book, Risen about a woman who's murdered and then trapped in her body by a supernatural being, and she has to fight for control of her soul. So how did you decide to write this book and why did you decide to write this book?
Tonia Ransom [00:25:09] Well, I originally started writing it about a year after my father passed away. And what happened to him was he got in a car accident, had a brain bleed and had surgery. Everything was kind of okay at first, but then he started having seizures, which is, you know, fairly well well-known complication after brain surgery. But the seizures that he had were, you know, really bad. They basically, you know, just fried his brain. So they had to put him on a ventilator and, you know, all this other stuff. He would open his eyes and he would look around, but he was not there. And growing up, he always told me these stories about zombies, but not like, you know, the arrr brain zombies, but like, you know, the Haitian style zombies of, you know, you get raised from the dead and there's someone essentially enslaving and controlling you. So I grew up with stories like that. So of course, you know what was going on in my head, you know, watching him in his hospital bed was, you know, is he in there? Is he trapped in his body and like he can't communicate and, you know, or is, you know. Just not there, you know? I didn't know what he was feeling. You know, I hadn't really processed that at the time. And I just started writing Risen and I didn't make the connection that I was kind of trying to work through my dad's death with it until I got to this one point. And I can't remember exactly what point it was. I think it was about a quarter of the way through the book and I was like, Oh my God, this is about my dad. I can't I can't do this right now. And, you know, I kind of, you know, put it away and was like, I'm not not doing this. I cannot I'm not ready to process this just yet. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had PTSD. So, you know, I really didn't have the coping mechanisms that I needed to handle it. So I'm glad that I shelved it when I did. But then a couple of years later, you know, I got into therapy, I got diagnosed with PTSD and, you know, starting to work through some things and thought, okay, I can, you know, pick this up. And I did. And then I kind of let it linger for a little bit because writing a book is really, really hard, much harder than I thought it was going to be.
Farai Chideya [00:27:10] Well, congratulations on that. And also, thanks for sharing your journey with trauma. There definitely has been a lot of work I've been doing on trauma. I mean, being a journalist is a fairly traumatic profession, but I think I also gravitated to it because my nervous system was a little keyed up from earlier experiences, and we tried to talk on the show a lot about trauma and mental health. And it sounds like your work on this novel, as well as your work with your therapist, has been healing in the end, is that right?
Tonia Ransom [00:27:44] Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.
Farai Chideya [00:27:46] What kinds of feedback do you get from listeners to Nightlight and Afflicted or readers of your book? People who… people of different races and ages? I'm sure, who have plugged into your work in one way or the other.
Tonia Ransom [00:28:00] It kind of runs the gamut. You know, there are a lot of people who are like, you know, especially Black people who are like, oh my gosh, thank you for doing this, because I finally get to see my life reflected in horror. And, you know, I grew up in the South and it's a very conservative part of the country. And horror is kind of looked down upon, like I was discouraged from writing horror in school. You know, some of my family members were like, oh, you know, it's the devil's work. You know, you know, don't mess with that kind of thing. And so, you know, there's this really, I think, difficult relationship with Black people and horror because, you know, one side you've got, you know, all of this processing that Black people need to do, you know, with all the things that we experience and horror can help us process those things. But then, you know, the flip side to that is that the community also kind of looks down on it as, you know, this isn't a very Christian thing to do. So a lot of Black horror lovers don't get to love it openly because they get judged for doing so. And, you know, I got a lot of feedback about that from Black people just saying, you know, thank you for giving me horror that, you know, speaks to me and speaks to the struggles that Black people in particular deal with. And then, you know, I've gotten feedback from a lot of non-Black listeners who have said, you know, thank you. Like, I've been able to diversify my reading list and I'm buying more work by Black writers and seeking out diverse horror and, you know, kind of thanking me for holding the space and introducing them to new folks to read.
Farai Chideya [00:29:42] Yeah. Is there anything you want to tell us about that you're working on right now before we wrap up?
Tonia Ransom [00:29:48] Um, yeah, I am working on a book right now on monster biology, which, like, I'm super, super excited about. Basically it is, you know, werewolves, vampires, etc. existed in the real world. How would they work and what examples do we have from the real world that we can apply to these various monsters? So I'm a big nerd, so I'm very, very excited.
Farai Chideya [00:30:13] Oh my gosh, I love that. I can't wait to read it. It's been so much fun to talk to you. Tanya Ransom, author and host of the award winning horror podcast Nightlight. Thank you for joining us today.
Tonia Ransom [00:30:25] Thank you so much for having me.
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Farai Chideya [00:30:37] This hour, we've highlighted some of the new generation of horror noir creators. And now we had the honor to introduce a pioneer of Black Horror Award winning author Tananarive Due. She's out with her new book, The Reformatory, which drops just in time for your Halloween reading needs. Tananarive, welcome to the show.
Tananarive Due [00:30:55] So excited to see you, Farai. I'm thrilled.
Farai Chideya [00:30:58] Yeah, I wish it was in person, but, you know, to be continued. So let's turn to your new book, The Reformatory. It's historical fiction. And you center this story around a real person, your great uncle, Robert Stephens. How did you find out about his story?
Tananarive Due [00:31:16] Well, it was in 2013. I lost my mother. The world upside down at the end of 2012. And in the midst of that deep grief, we got a call from the Florida state attorney general's office saying that I might have a relative buried on the grounds of the True Life Dozier School for Boys in Mariana, Florida. And at first, I thought it was a call about a child on my grandmother's side because she'd had a half brother who was executed as a juvenile when she was young, and she never recovered from it. And I had already addressed that in fiction in a short story called Trial Day. But this turned out to be a completely different young man. This was a 15 year old. It was in 1937. And in true life, sad to say, Robert Stephens died, stabbed supposedly, who knows, by another inmate there. And my father, who is a civil rights lawyer, he's now 88. And this was a long time ago. So he was probably closer to 80. But he went with me to Mariana, to these community meetings. It was sort of both a way of us processing our grief over mom's absence and trying to sort of learn more about what had happened to this uncle frankly, I don't think she ever knew about I don't think anyone ever told her the story of Robert Stephens or she surely would have told me. And that was when I decided I'm going to write about this, not nonfiction, because there are a lot of beautiful memoirs that have been published about The Dozier School for Boys, and that part was not my story. And I certainly did not want to write fiction with the same ending that Robert Stephens had faced. So my whole point was to be inspired by what happened to Robert Stephens to take that name that had been largely forgotten, had not been uttered probably by grief stricken relatives, and bring him to life in a different form, a different time. I said it in 1950 because that was my parents coming of age generation. I had written a civil rights memoir with my late mother Freedom in the Family: A Mother Daughter Memoir Of The Fight For Civil Rights. So I knew more about the 1950s from her. I felt more at home in that time, so I decided to set it in the 1950, give him a different story, and very importantly, add ghosts, because I felt like I wanted this to be horror and do a little bit of sleight of hand in the sense that yes, ghosts are scary, but not as scary, honestly, as frankly, just history being in 1950 as a Black person, just as the author was very scary. So it's a blending of supernatural horror and historical horror.
Farai Chideya [00:34:06] There's actually a piece that came out in October of 2012 on All Things Considered from NPR titled Florida's Dozier School for Boys A True Horror Story. And it says that 81 boys and young men died there. I mean, at least… I'm so sorry that this is part of your family history. And I also want to really give props to you and your mother for the book that you wrote together, Freedom in the Family: A Mother Daughter Memoir Of The Fight For Civil Rights. What does it mean to bring yourself as a creator and your family's history, you know, you just mentioned your father and then also your mother fighting for civil rights and everything that you as a family have endured into your work.
Tananarive Due [00:34:55] It means more than I can say. I do have that ache, obviously, since losing my mother. We were very close. We spoke on the phone every day. She was my first heroine in terms of someone who was literally willing to risk her life to stand up for what she believed in. And she also gave me the grace and space not to be that person, to be an artist, and to try to create change through a different channel, all of those things. So I often say that Freedom in the Family is the book that I am. I consider the most important book I've ever written. If there was only one book, it should have been that book. And the reformatory, I think, stands behind that one. In that sense, I feel like it's kind of a gift to my mother's history. The protagonist, Gloria, has my mother's middle name. Her name was Patricia Gloria Stevens Due, and she was my North star through the writing of the story, what would my mother have done? What would 17 year old Patricia Stephens Due have done in this situation? So if an agent or an editor had a suggestion about something and it did not fit what my mother would have done, I was very, very clear about that. It's a way of trying to honor her, her family, and frankly, this generation we are now losing. But my father is 88. So many people, obviously, that mentored him have already passed away. And people in his cohort are also passing away and with them, their stories. And, you know, I think about music sometimes every time I listen to Ray Charles, my dad loves to listen to Ray Charles almost daily. I love that old soul music, that music from the 1950s. And it's so full of joy and life. And it really helps me sort of get a prism into the humanity of that generation because they were suffering, and yet they have this beautiful outlet. They created rock and roll, they created blues, they created jazz. They really set the stage for American music all the while during Jim Crow, with these violent ways that white supremacy tried to keep itself supported. It still does. But it was much more violent in the 1950s and moving on to the 1960s and obviously previously with lynchings. And Florida, look, one of the one of the reasons my mother wanted to write Freedom in the Family was that she knew in her lifetime that people were either deliberately or accidentally forgetting history. And she once sat in on a textbook committee meeting and they said, well, there was no civil rights movement in Florida. And she was like, wait a minute, she was there.
Farai Chideya [00:37:39] Oh, no.
Tananarive Due [00:37:39] She and her sister, my Aunt Priscilla Claus, spent 49 days in jail with other Florida A&M University students in 1960. Just because I tried to order food at a lunch counter and refused to pay their fine when they were arrested. And she was arrested many, many times. My aunt was kicked in the stomach by a police officer and basically went into exile in the 1960s moving to Ghana. And many people we wanted to talk to either had passed on and had never told their children what they did or they were like World War II veterans who were too traumatized by what they had been through to want to talk about it. So even though the reformatory is fiction, obviously in our current environment, especially in Florida, where it is almost becoming against the law to teach the truth about history, it is so very important that we remember these stories. We remember these previous generations.
Farai Chideya [00:38:35] So turning to the fictional Gloria, you know, who has your mother's middle name without giving away spoilers, too many spoilers because you always need a teaser. What is Gloria's role in this story? In this Horror story
Tananarive Due [00:38:51] Gloria is rooted in the real world. She doesn't see ghosts. She has premonitions. So there's a little bit of touch to that. I set it in my fictitious town of Gracetown, which readers may remember from my short story collection Ghost Summer and The Wishing Pool. And it's a town where strange things happen in the summer and children are very sensitive to ghosts and spirits and creatures. So Gloria does. She's older. As you get older, it starts to fade. She doesn't she's not living with sort of one foot in one world and one foot in the other. So Gloria's role is really almost a message to the current generation. What are the steps that you take when a loved one is incarcerated? Because even though this is set in 1950, a lot of the issues and the reformatory is still very present today, you can still be asleep in your house and police can break into your house, put your child in chains, and then take them away to a cage, and you will have very little recourse to comfort them, to talk to them, to see them. And so many families are going through this. I want. Gloria, to walk it through. Like what? What do you do when you walk into that big, scary courthouse? Now, in her time, it's segregated. So there's a Jim Crow entrance, but a lot of it finding the lawyer, trying to find a lawyer when you don't have money. Who do you talk to? How do you get allies in the community to advocate for you? Using every method she can to try to free her brother. That really is her role. And that's what my mother would have done.
Farai Chideya [00:40:20] It's easy to see the horror in the way that a reformatory like the real one operated. What did you add? You know, we know that there are ghosts and your descriptions are so powerful. What makes a horror story Horror for example, You know. And what makes your writing in this genre for the reformatory horror? What sorts of emotional aspects were you seeking to put into the reader experience?
Tananarive Due [00:40:49] I have to be honest. One of the reasons I didn't want to write nonfiction is because it would be so stomach churning to write about the real things that happened at this reformatory. So it's not even so much about what I added, except for the ghosts. I did add ghosts and I did add a kind of a psychopathic warden as a stand in sort of a composite character for that many, many, many people who if when you listen to reports from survivors, beat, sexually abused, and with so many in the graveyard clearly killed these children, I don't have a finger I can point at anyone. So I created Warden Haddock as a composite. But honestly, other than that, it was subtracting. It was what I couldn't say. It was what I couldn't write, because the stories from these survivors are so horrific, one that really stands out in my mind… This was a segregated facility, Black side and white side, and one of the white survivors remembered a Black child that they are called Blackie, who was put into an industrial size dryer. And that and the dryer was turned on. And that was the last time we ever saw him. I can't put that in the novel. I'm not going to write a novel about a child being sexually assaulted. They had a rape room at The Dozier School for Boys. I'm not going to put my protagonist through that. So I really had to add the ghosts, not only to bring it more into the realm of supernatural horror, which by definition is supposed to be entertainment, right? But also to honor the fact that there was so much death here, that there was so much suffering here. And you, reader, I am not going to make you sift through all of this death and all this suffering time and time and time again. But these ghosts represent the past violence.
Farai Chideya [00:42:38] Yeah. Well, I'd love you to read a little bit of the book for us, but before you read from the passage, can you set it up for us a little bit?
Tananarive Due [00:42:46] Absolutely. This is Robert Stephens, first day at the reformatory. He is just being oriented by, as they call them then, a Negro dorm master named Boon, who is very gruff and he doesn't know what to expect. And while he's being walked across the grounds, he feels like all of a sudden he's in the middle of a fire. And this is the excerpt I'm going to read.
Then came the worst. The screams Mama had whimpered and screamed and her sickness. But Robert had never heard human screams so wretched. They were like animals. The sound was solid enough to touch all around him. Boys, a room of screaming, boys burning in a fire in a flash of knowing as thin as a spider's web, Robert saw the writhing boy's faces twisted with pain and terror, half hidden in the smoke clouds, some already charred Black. They pounded with frantic arms against a wall, thunder, begging and screaming, dying. Boone gave him a hard yank again, and Robert was plucked from the smoke and the burning room, only in the empty field, strewn with pine needles and cones again. He expected to see that soil charred Black behind them, but nothing remained of his vision except a watery dance like the air above a campfire. Robert panted at the coolness, trying to soothe its lungs…had Boone felt it too? Boone leered back at him as if they were sharing a joke. Children shouldn't hear, you like that, Boone said. Mute. Robert shook his head. Strange excitement. Play it in Boone's eyes or behind them. Everybody don't go home, Boone said.
Farai Chideya [00:44:25] Wow. So that is part of The Reformatory, the new book by acclaimed author Tananarive Due. So I want to ask a bit more about your work and then broaden it to the genre. So we have talked about the history laden into the reformatory, and you have characters that you have pulled in from other parts of history into your work, including Scott Joplin. In your book Joplin's Ghost and I interviewed you about that back in 2006. So why do you draw on history in your books?
Tananarive Due [00:44:59] It was a little bit of a surprise to me when a former agent of mine suggested that I write The Black Rose, which was based on Alex Haley's research about Madam C.J. Walker. I said, I don't write historical fiction. And he said, Well, look at your novel, My Soul To Keep, look at those historical chapters. And I think it's because of growing up sort of at my mother's knee, hearing her oral histories about the civil rights movement, which really made me finally decide, you know what, let's write a book. So maybe she'll stop telling stories all the time, which actually she did not. But it's that I think it's that sense of trying to preserve, trying to honor feeling so grateful for the sacrifices of my parents generation and really wanting to serve them by making sure and the people before them to make sure they are not forgotten.
Farai Chideya [00:45:47] You also were in this documentary, Horror Noire, which I saw screening at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And you were there, I believe. Yes. And it was you know, they had a panel and it was I really loved that documentary. And, you know, you were in it and all of these different people from film and writing. Do you believe that there is a genre of Black horror that's within the horror genre?
Tananarive Due [00:46:18] Absolutely. Black Horror has always been sort of a subgenre. Just even back in the day with a film called Son of Ingagi from 1940. You know. But it's only really since Get Out in 2017 that there's been a wider conversation about the existence of Black horror, the ways Black characters were ill treated in mainstream horror, with a lot of tropes like the Sacrificial Negro and the Spiritual Guide and the Magical Negro. If you think back, you could say, Yeah, that that was kind of wacko. And and about the, you know, the Black character jumps out of the window to save the white people for no reason. And we were kind of used as faithful servants. And now as more Black creators are getting power in Hollywood having agency. Black Horror has a lot of different flavors. In fact, I'm in an anthology called Out There screaming that Jordan Peele put together with 19 Black horror authors. And trust me, these stories are as different as different can be sometimes Black. I have a quote in Horror Noire. Black history is Black Horror, and I'm seeing that, quote a lot popping up in social media because it's part of the epigraph of the book, The Other Black Girl, you know, which is But a lot of people are discovering that book now. But that is just in many ways so true. I don't mean, obviously the strides and the miraculous advances we've been able to make despite all the forces against us. I mean, the violence, the unrelenting disrespect, the fear of us that holds us back, even when we're walking through our neighborhoods at night, when we walk into a restroom where we're walking at a convenience store, the eyes are on us. It's just it's a lot to take. So horror is a great vehicle for Black creators to either address that head on racism as the monster, like in something like Get Out or frankly, The Reformatory, which is literally critical race theory as a novel. More or it can just be a demon. It can be a ghost because we are Black, but we are also human. And I really feel that the reason horror fans are reacting so well to Black Horror is that we can use that prism of the very specific to reach the universal.
Farai Chideya [00:48:38] And Horror Noire is a popular title. There is Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, which is the documentary that I saw. And then there is Horror Noire, Six Stories of Black Horror, which is an anthology. And you were, you know, of stories and you were a writer for that. So we also interviewed the artist Zandashé Brown, a director in the anthology series. What was it like getting to work on that.
Tananarive Due [00:49:05] To to call it a dream come true was an understatement. I mean, The Lake, which I co-wrote with my husband and collaborator Steven Barnes, was my first adaptation after starting publishing in 1995. You know, a lot of people have tried and a lot of people have come close, but that little 30 minute segment was my first adaptation, and we also did a second one Fugue State. And neither story, by the way, features racism as the monster. It's really just, hey, guess what? We get to be the protagonist in this story. We're not the sidekick, we're not the sacrifice. This is our agency, our story, and you can learn from us.
Farai Chideya [00:49:49] Yeah. I love your writing so much.
Tananarive Due - Thank you, Farai.
Farai Chideya - You know, and. In any case, as we get close to wrapping up here, you are a lecturer at UCLA in the fields of Black Horror and Afrofuturism. And I think about the ways in which I learned from you about Octavia Butler well before most people knew about her, I'd read her work. But you taught me about her as a person and a bit about her as a creator. What do you think is important to pass along to your students as well as anyone else about, you know, some of the queens of Afrofuturism and of horror, as well as the possibilities for the genre moving ahead.
Tananarive Due [00:50:34] What's beautiful about something like Afrofuturism, which I teach basically as the Black speculative arts of the diaspora. So I have a very broad definition that includes African futurism and it includes writers from the Caribbean like Nalo Hopkinson. But what I think is so special about Afrofuturism is this idea that it creates leadership positions often for Black women. If you look at the work of Octavia Butler. And that in itself is revolutionary because you can map that to our reality where it's Black women who voted in the greatest numbers against Donald Trump and the 2016 election. So perhaps if you had followed us, we would not have been in that situation at all. And I have learned over time that you can spend a lot of breath trying to change people's minds and get them to believe in you. Or you can just walk your path and see who follows you. And that's what I think the power of Afrofuturism is. It's like different alternate realities, alternate histories, utopianism, like Sun Ra. It's a different vision of what we can be, different leadership models, different faces. It's really the present, but it looks like the future. And people can follow us. Even as creators, especially as creators, we have the power to move hearts and minds sometimes I think more than statistics and the news.
Farai Chideya [00:51:58] I, I couldn't agree more. You know, absolutely. And I mean, I love the news, but fiction is actually my heart. And I have some writing that I will do, probably not until the next election is over. But in any case.
Tananarive Due [00:52:12] Get to that writing, though.
Farai Chideya [00:52:14] I know, I know. I find it hard to toggle between fact and fiction, you know, But that's another whole story I need… I need a better writing regime, and I'm trying to redo an outline of, I have a complete draft of a science fiction novel, which is a hot mess and needs to be re outlined. So that's where I am. And I can do that.
Tananarive Due [00:52:35] And that's what I teach in my life writing program. A sentence a day.
Farai Chideya [00:52:39] I love that. Okay. All right. I'm going to take that to heart. Last question. How do you celebrate spooky season, whether it's Halloween itself or the whole month or whatever? Like what floats your boat?
Tananarive Due [00:52:53] Starting September 1st, I think is the official beginning of spooky season. And I have my fake crow here in my office. I have a real decoy crow I'm using to try to attract crows to my yard, not just for Halloween. I will continue to feed them if I get them. But I watch a horror movie every day. I'm reading horror all the time. Just rewatched It, as a matter of fact. And that is a scary, scary movie. And you know, why do I like being scared? It's hard to say, but I think I got it from my mother because of her trauma from the civil rights era. I think she used horror as a way to almost make more sense of the world. You know, It's like, well, at least it wasn't that right. So I find myself drawn to horror about caretaking. You know, my father is 88 and he needs extra help now. So a really, really dark movie like The Dark and the Wicked or Hereditary or other stories about loss and grief are strangely comforting.
Farai Chideya [00:53:52] Yeah, no, I relate to that. And I'm a obsessive listener to horror podcasts, so we must pick up this thread another time. Tananarive Due, author of the new book The Reformatory. Thanks for joining us today.
Tananarive Due [00:54:07] Thank you for having me today.
Farai Chideya [00:54:12] Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts. We'd also like to invite you to sign up for our newsletter where we share additional insights and resources for the OBP community. Check us out on Instagram @OurBodyPolitic and click the link in our bio.
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora farms and Rococo Punch. I'm host and executive producer Farai Chideya. Nina Spensley and Shanta Covington are also executive producers. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Andrea Asuaje and Ann Marie Awad, Natyna Bean, Morgan Givens, Emily Ho and Monica Morales Garcia are our producers. Nicole Pasulka is our fact checker. Our associate producer is David Escobar. Our technical director is Mike Garth with engineering help from Carter Martin.
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