Fans of the horror genre recognize that one type of horror doesn’t always fit all. Some readers might prefer mind-twisting psychological terror, while others prefer to get their thrills and chills from books about the supernatural–“ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties.” Movie viewers might prefer an eerie, atmospheric gothic haunting, or want to watch a gore-filled, gritty slasher flick. Understanding of the type of fright induced by a sub-genre of horror gives readers and movie-goers the rare opportunity to exert autonomy over fear. In other words, you can choose what scares you, an opportunity not afforded in real life.
One of the sub-genres of horror you may have encountered–perhaps without knowing it–is the Ethnogothic. Many folks were first introduced to this sub-genre by Jordan Peele, writer and director of Get Out and Us, but the term was coined by academics and comic creators John Jennings and Dr. Stanford Carpenter, developed from a conversation with one of Afrofuturism’s queens, Ytasha Womack. So let’s leave it to the experts to define this horror genre, “To us [Jennings and Carpenter] the Ethnogothic deals with primarily speculative narratives that actively engage with negatively affective and racially oriented psychological traumas via the traditions of Gothic tropes and technologies. These tropes include the grotesque other, body horror, haunted spaces, the hungry ghost, the uncanny, the doppelgänger, fictional historical artifacts, and multivalent disruptive tensions between the constructions of memory, history, the present, and the self”.
If a horror sub-genre that aims to exorcise the ghosts of history, lift the veil on collective trauma, and purge the monsters of the present day–racism, inequity, prejudice–speaks to you, perhaps check out one of the books or films below. For a more in-depth look at this sub-genre and its history, watch the YouTube interview “Exploring the Ethnogothic,” featuring John Jennings and Dr. Stanford Carpenter.
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