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BOOK NEWS: Human monstrosity in Black horror fiction

 Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction 

BY JERRY RAFIKI JENKINS

Ohio State UP, 2024

ISBN: 978-0-8142-5905-4

https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215364.html

In Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction, Jerry RafikiJenkins examines four types of human monsters that frequently appear in Black American horror fiction—the monsters of White rage, respectability, not-ness, and serial killing—arguing that such monsters represent specific ideologies of American anti-Blackness. Jenkins examines a variety of these monstrous forms in Tananarive Due’s The Between, Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, and many other works. While these monsters and the texts that they populate ask us to think about the role that anti-Blackness plays in being or becoming American, they also offer intellectual resources that Black and non-Black people might use to combat the everyday versions of human monstrosity.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

“Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction is a necessary work that emphasizes the sanity and rationality of monstrous figures. Jenkins persuasively contends that combining Afropessimism and affirmation of Black life in fiction can provide resistance to the deadliness of the racial reality of anti-Blackness.” —Keith Byerman, author of Remembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction

“Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction is sharp and intellectually daring. Jenkins’s treatment of violence and prospects of Black counter-violence make it a timely resource for Black studies scholars and social and cultural critics of all kinds.” —Greg Thomas, author of Hip-Hop Revolution in the Flesh: Power, Knowledge, and Pleasure in Lil’ Kim’s Lyricism

Jerry Rafiki Jenkins is a professor in the Departments of English and Humanities, and Multicultural Studies at Palomar College and the author of The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction.

Welcome new JML co-editor Jessica Burstein

 

Jessica Burstein has been promoted from advisory editor to co-editor of the Journal of Modern Literature. Burstein has had a long career in editing, learning while serving as a lackey (the term “editorial assistant” had yet to be invented, and those chosen did not appear on the masthead) at Critical Inquiry; then serving as the first founding managing editor of Modernism/modernity, beginning in a room with a chair, a phone, and a rolodex, and putting together its early issues. 

As an associate professor in the Department of English and adjunct in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, Burstein currently serves on the editorial boards of Modern Language Quarterly, as well as the advisory editorial board of Modernism/modernity. Their own critical work focuses on fashion and modernism; but they nurse a residual fondness for the history of sciences, and contemporary fiction. Burstein’s novel What It Was Like Not To Sleep With You has yet to find a press; meanwhile you can find Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art in an art history library near you.