Ring Shout
P. Djèlí Clark
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Ring Shout
P. Djèlí Clark
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
P. Djèlí Clark is no stranger to the novella, and Ring Shout, a demonic horror twist on the Jim Crow South, is the newest addition to his collection. In Ring Shout, Clark gives us a world where the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915 was a ritual performed by white men to summon demons — and not just any demons. Ku Kluxes are pale, pointy-headed entities existing alongside human members of the Klan, terrorizing Black folk and intentionally feeding the Klan's racist hatred.
Tananarive Due, in her essay 'Black Horror Rising,' discusses the role of racial trauma in horror fiction, writing that 'horror can help us allegorize racial monsters to help us to confront true-life fears.'.
P. Djèlí Clark is well known in the world of speculative fiction for his unique ability to seamlessly take key pieces of history and morph them into the fantastical.
Ring Shout, the latest historical fantasy novella by the ever-brilliant P. Djèlí Clark, achieves what the TV show Lovecraft Country couldn’t manage: to do something entirely new with H.P. Lovecraft. Twisting and twining racial violence with supernatural horror is old hat, but Clark has never been an author to settle for what’s expected.
If there’s such a thing as boisterous folk horror, P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout may set the standard.
... flirts with allegories of hatred and corruption, just as it stirs echoes of much simpler sci-fi plotting. It’s invigorated by quotations from forgotten voices of the past, often in Gullah, recorded by scholars. One thing is sure: Ring Shout isn’t really about 1922 in Georgia. It’s looking forward to the here and now..
What if White supremacy was not only a monstrous philosophy, but was enabled by actual horrific monsters? Clark's feverishly inventive period adventure imagines this scenario in blunt and grisly detail.