African American Gothic in the Era of Black Lives Matter

This Element overviews the shift in African American Gothic in the context of Black Lives Matter and racial oppression.

Maisha Wester (Author)

9781009161015, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2025

82 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.14 kg

This Element explores twenty-first century Black Gothic literature and film as it responds to American anti-Blackness and as they illustrate a mode of Black Gothic fiction termed Black Lives Matter (BLM) Gothic. The various texts express frustration, rage, and sorrow over the failures of previous civil rights fights. Intended as an introduction to a complex mode, this Element explores the three central themes in BLM Gothic texts and defines the mode's pattern of tropes. The first section reviews the depictions of American anti-Blackness, and defines the mode's pattern of tropes reveal the necropolitical mechanisms at play in US systemic racism. The second section explores the ways the fictions 'make whiteness strange' in order to destabilize white normativity and shatter the power arising from such claims. The final section examines the costs of waging war against racial oppression and the power of embracing 'monstrosity'.

1. Introduction
2. You already dead
3. Making whiteness strange
4. Becoming the monster
5. Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]