Did you ever venture beyond Three Men in a Boat and explore the world of Jerome K Jerome? You should. For not only did he write ghost stories, he also deconstructed them mercilessly. He had some surprisingly thoughtful things to say in general – and he engaged in speculative satire, which may have influenced some of the great dystopian novels of the 20th century, including works by Huxley and Orwell. Join us, then, dear listener, for more Edwardian Arcane…
Hoodoo. Conjure-work. We’re going to the roots of root-work today, with music, material and musings . My writing flowed this way from an interest in Cunning Folk, both European and African, plus the pleasure of early blues. I also have a love of Manly Wade Wellman’s character John the Balladeer, though that part only came to mind afterwards, when I was looking up early sourcebooks related to hoodoo (more below). The Memphis Jug Band was the real start for me, decades ago, with their “Aunt Caroline Dye (Dyer) Blues”, and it spread from there…
I’ve written about the Northern European tradition of Cunning Folk before. The hedge-wizards, wise women and more, often – though not always – Christians, who could be called upon for protection against curses, hexes and blights. Whilst Wicca, historical witchcraft, and voodoo or vodun, are fascinating in themselves, the real roots that interest me in the US are those of hoodoo.
“Because sometimes I’m waitin’ at the crossroads, but I does it how I choose,” said Mamma Lucy. “I ain’t one of your mamalois, voodoo girls or Sant-eria ladies, liftin’ their skirts when you come callin’, neither.”
jlg
I’m only a writer, exploring strange places. But you might find what follows interesting. Historically, as with many of the old Cunning Folk, the guiding principle for most hoodoo was belief in God and the Bible. Where Caribbean and New Orleans spiritual movements blended Catholic saints with African belief systems, a lot of hoodoo folk were Protestant in one form or another. Voodoo and hoodoo get confused, but they ain’t the same.
You might call hoodoo a dominant blend of African beliefs, with threads of European herb and symbolic lore pulled in as well. Much conjure-work links back to Ewe and Fon lore from West Africa. The lines got blurred, as people from different tribes and cultures were enslaved and forced together. They sought systems which might sustain at least a fraction of their origins and identity, including shared reference points. With time, some of these developed into beliefs and oral traditions which echoed the lost past but also reflected life in the States.
If this was a predominantly black road, it didn’t automatically exclude whites, because it slowly drew in folklore from European immigrants, especially Germanic ones. It came from the big slave plantations, but as the 19th century progressed, it spread into communities through freedmen and women, and had value for many poor and disenfranchised people. It absorbed elements of Native American herbalism, and became its own thing. Hoodoo. Root-work is another name, from the use of medicinal or magical roots and herbs.
(Zora Neale Hurston, who we mentioned briefly last week, wrote a study of Afro-American folklore, including discussion of hoodoo, root work and conjuration in her 1935 collection of tales, Mules and Men.)
One written crossover example is The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, a magical text allegedly written by Moses, passed down as hidden portions of the Old Testament. A grimoire, a text of magical incantations and seals, the text circulated in Germany from at least the 1700s, passed through immigrants such as the Pennsylvania Dutch, and entered both white general folklore and black Christian hoodoo.
The direct Manly Wade Wellman link slipped in to my mind when I came across mention of Pow-wows, or The Long Lost Friend whilst researching conjure-work. This book crops up in a number of Wellman’s stories. This is another genuine ‘grimoire’ from the 1820s, by one Johann Georg Hohman, and was originally called Der Lange Verborgene Freund.
“Bind,” he said to someone over me. “Bind, bind. Unless you can count the stars, or the drops in the ocean, be bound.”
It was a spell-saying. “From the Long Lost Friend?” I asked.
Wellman, ‘Vandy Vandy’, (1953)
The Long Lost Friend is a collection of spells, charms and remedies for everyday use. Like the Books of Moses, it initially entered hoodoo through the Pennsylvanian Dutch and other groups of Germanic origin.
It crossed relatively easily into hoodoo because it also puts Christianity in the driving seat and emphasis belief in the Bible as core. ‘Pow-wows’ was added to later editions, in reference to real or supposed Native American practices.
“The book has remained quite popular among practitioners of Hoodoo… James Foster noted that many shops in Harlem and Brooklyn stocked The Long Lost Friend in 1957.”
Daniel Harms, The Long Lost Friend: A 19th Century American Grimoire (2012)
So, I was travelling 1920s Harlem in my mind a year or two ago, learning, and expanding my Tales of the Last Edwardian, when I saw someone passing through, one of the Cunning Folk who might resonate in her own time and place.
She was old like me, black like I’m not, and a foil to the industrialised, post-Edwardian scientific approach. Bare feet in the earth, and silver dimes around her ankles. A worn print dress on a strong, gangly frame. She used her brains more than she used out-and-out conjure-work, but she knew what she was doing if she had to lay a trick or turn a jinx.
I also knew that she held no truck with oppressive wealth and monstrous laws, that she was plain ornery, her heart with the voiceless.
‘She’ turned out to be Mamma Lucy.
If you write about hoodoo from around the early 20th Century, you can’t avoid the blues – which is a good excuse to mention some tracks here. You also can’t avoid Aunt Caroline Dye (not Dyer- the track at the start was named through an error or pronunciation or transcription).
Despite her association with hoodoo, Caroline Dye was a psychic, a fortune-teller – there’s less evidence of her performing the slower root-work, laying tricks or setting up actual spells. And typically, there were more claims made for her and her skills than she made for herself. People went to her for readings, and they went in their thousands, hopefuls looking for answers.
She was born to enslaved parents in Jackson County, Arkansas – or in Spartanburg, South Carolina. There are different versions, both of her origins and her death. The earliest suggestion of her birth is 1810, which seems unlikely, and the more accepted one is in the 1840s. As Caroline Tracy, a name which seems to have come from her family’s original owners (a phrase which should never have had to be typed), she married Martin Dye of Sulphur Rock, some time after the American Civil War.
Called “one of the most celebrated women ever to live in the Midsouth”, she is said to have died September 26th, 1918 (which would have made her 108 years old – or, more likely, in her seventies). She was buried in Jackson County.
Caroline Dye was supposed to have the ‘second sight’ even when she was young, but became famous for being a seer after the Dyes set up home in Newport, Arkansas, around 1900.
Despite the dates above, others such as catherine yronwode of luckymojo.com have compiled evidence that suggests Caroline Dye may have been around longer. One of the problems is that there are mentions of her in music which suggest she was alive in 1930, when Will Shade and the Memphis Jug Band recorded their song about her. This details Dye’s hometown as Newport News, in Virginia, but the song’s music and a verse was lifted from the band’s 1927 song Newport News Blues, so that was probably just convenient (or locally popular).
Some have spoken as if she was around until 1936-37. This may have been the general remembrance of a notable figure. It may even have been complicated by the tendency for famous ‘names’ in fortune-telling and hoodoo to be adopted by later practitioners. So there may have been a second ‘Caroline Dye’, no relation but using her reputation.
Dye was “the gypsy” in the 1914 song “The St. Louis Blues,” according to W.C. Handy, who wrote it. He later names her directly, in his 1923 song “Sundown Blues.”
For I’m going to Newport
I mean Newport Arkansaw
I’m going there to see Aunt Car’line Dye
Why she’s a reader
And I need her
Law! Law! Law! She reads your fortune, and her cards don’t lie.
I’ll put some ashes in my sweet Papa’s bed,
So he can’t slip out, Hoodoo in his bread
In 1937, Johnny/Johnnie Temple named her again in his “Hoodoo Woman” song:
Well, I’m going to Newport,
just to see Aunt Caroline Dye
Well, I’m going to Newport,
just to see Aunt Caroline Dye
She’s a fortune teller, hooo, Lord,
she sure don’t tell no lie
And she told my fortune,
as I walked through her door
And she told my fortune,
as I walked through her door
Said, “I’m sorry for you, buddy, hooo, Lord,
the woman don’t want you no more”
Aunt Caroline Dye also crops up in “Wang Dang Doodle,” (1960) by Howlin’ Wolf and Koko Taylor. This is a curious song about rowdy merry-making. It borrows from black oral history, including lesbian nicknames of earlier times. The original reference to Fast Talkin’ Fannie, for example, used a word other than Talkin’.
Tell Peg and Caroline Dye / We gonna have a time…
Dye would read futures and make predictions. Her most commonly quoted method was using cards, as in Handy’s lyrics. It’s said that she wouldn’t help in romantic matters, though, and told people that they should sort their own love lives out. She did offer to find lost people, lost cattle and other items through reading her deck, or through her visions.
“Going to go see Aunt Caroline Dye” became a common saying among black people of the time, and as she grew famous, she became respected by many whites as well. She reportedly died a landowner with substantial fortune.
In the 1960s, Will Shade spoke of her having wider powers. He said of her:
“White and Colored would go to her. You sick in bed, she raise the sick. Conjure, Hoodoo, that’s what some people say, but that’s what some people call it, conjure.”
Interview by Paul Oliver, Conversation with the Blues
“Seven Sisters ain’t nowhere wit’ Aunt Caroline Dye; she was the onliest one could break the record with the hoodoo.”
ibid
The Seven Sisters were supposed hoodoo women in 1920’s New Orleans. As usual, controversy surrounds their nature. Some say they were genuine sisters, others that they were just seven black women working together, and it’s even been claimed that they were one woman in different guises. The name also crosses concepts of seventh sons and seventh daughters being special. As with Caroline Dye, they were well known for their psychic abilities or clairvoyance.
They tell me Seven Sisters in New Orleans that can really fix a man up right
They tell me Seven Sisters in New Orleans that can really fix a man up right
And I’m headed for New Orleans, Louisiana, I’m travelin’ both day and night.
I hear them say the oldest Sister look just like she’s 21
I hear them say the oldest Sister look just like she’s 21
And said she can look right in your eyes and tell you just exactly what you want done.
They tell me they’ve been hung, been bled, and been crucified
They tell me they’ve been hung, been bled, and been crucified
But I just want enough help to stand on the water and rule the tide.
It’s bound to be Seven Sisters, ’cause I’ve heard it by everybody else
It’s bound to be Seven Sisters, I’ve heard it by everybody else
Course, I’d love to take their word, but I’d rather go and see for myself.
When I leave the Seven Sisters, I’ll pile stones all around
When I leave the Seven Sisters, I’ll pile stones all around
And go to my baby and tell her, “There’s another Seven Sister man in town.”
Good morning, Seven Sisters, just thought I’d come down and see
Good morning, Seven Sisters, I thought I’d come down to see
Will you build me up where I’m torn down, and make me strong where I’m weak?
Number Seven has its own significance in hoodoo work, as have the other odd numbers.
As to hoodoo itself, apart from mid-century and later commentaries, it’s interesting to read earlier writers. One source is Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858 – 1932), an African-American author, essayist and activist. Chesnutt was born in Ohio, his parents being “free persons of color” from North Carolina.
His position was odd – Chesnutt was legally white in some States, black in others. In a shameful time of Jim Crow laws in America, many state had a ‘one drop’ rule, which meant that even if you had only a single grandparent or great-grandparent who was black, you could be discriminated against. North Carolina adopted ‘one drop’ legislation in 1923.
Chesnutt’s paternal grandfather was known to be a white slaveholder, and he would have had other white ancestors. Despite his outward appearance, he identified as African American, and apparently never chose to be known as white.
Here are a couple of passages from his essay Superstitions & Folklore of the South:
Conjuration
The origin of this curious superstition itself is perhaps more easily traceable. It probably grew, in the first place, out of African fetichism (sic), which was brought over from the dark continent along with the dark people. Certain features, too, suggest a distant affinity with Voodooism, or snake worship, a cult which seems to have been indigenous to tropical America. These beliefs, which in the place of their origin had all the sanctions of religion and social custom, become, in the shadow of the white man’s civilization, a pale reflection of their former selves. In time, too, they were mingled and confused with the witchcraft and ghost lore of the white man, and the tricks and delusions of the Indian conjurer.
The only professional conjure doctor whom I met was old Uncle Jim Davis, with whom I arranged a personal interview. He came to see me one evening, but almost immediately upon his arrival a minister called. The powers of light prevailed over those of darkness, and Jim was dismissed until a later time, with a commission to prepare for me a conjure “hand” or good luck charm, of which, he informed some of the children about the house, who were much interested in the proceedings, I was very much in need.
I subsequently secured the charm, for which, considering its potency, the small sum of silver it cost me was no extravagant outlay. It is a very small bag of roots and herbs, and, if used according to directions, is guaranteed to insure me good luck and “keep me from losing my job.” The directions require it to be wet with spirits nine mornings in succession, to be carried on the person, in a pocket on the right hand side, care being taken that it does not come in contact with any tobacco.
Modern Culture, volume 13, 1901
His collection The Conjure Woman (1899) is available on-line, and also includes the full essay.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11666
Finally, there is one problem with writing fiction about hoodoo. It’s difficult to get right, and yet sometimes difficult to get wrong. People did make up ‘spells’ to suit them. And there are so many variants – styles of traditional conjure-work can be personal to a practitioner, or peculiar to a geographical area. The terminology varies across the States, and some branches came from passed-down pamphlets, others through family word of mouth. I always try to use versions of recognised conjure-work where I can, preferably form direct folk sources.
But it’s always interesting, anyway.
So Mamma Lucy is around in a number of my stories – ‘Hoodoo Man’; ‘Iron and Anthracite‘, ‘Whiskey, Beans and Dust’, and ‘The Witch of Pender’, plus a few others. I hope she trusts me well enough to keep spinnin’ them tales…
Thank you for listening. Do feel free to comment with thoughts and/or corrections. Back later in the week with something weird…
Folk-horror and lore are much on our minds at the moment. For starters, we’ve been back in finwife territory, to the long coast of our youth. Imaginations were stirred by a bright stone in the sand, a skeletal fish in the wrack from the tides. Whilst the longdogs ploughed across the empty shore, we murmured of the drowned and the deep places.
Django found a weed-encrusted World War 2 fortification, set in a turquoise pool. He was sniffing madly, trying to get to it, convinced that there were German spies lurking within; we suspected a dead crab. Maybe all of us were wrong.
Maybe behind barnacles and strings of chipped mussels, there crouched a finwife, far from Eynhallow. Unsure of the two large hunting beasts that circled her hiding place, she was waiting, waiting until a man came who might free her from her hag-shaped future.
Not wishing to doom her, we moved on. The longdogs charged across the long sands, and drank in Auburn Beck, one of the last markers for the sunken village of Auburn, now under the waves. The North Sea is constant; the land is not…
Here’s a snippet for you:
Two walkers found a dead gull that afternoon. It was pinned to the side of a twisted hawthorn near the cliffs, its breast torn open and the small ribs spread wide. They had no idea what it meant, and so they left quickly to eat their packed lunches somewhere else. They preferred their countryside like their sandwiches, in small, tasteful bites.
One of the Miss Hetheringtons was sat outside the village shop when the vicar came for supplies. She smiled at him and rolled her way inside.
“More pilchards, reverend?”
“I’m afraid so, Miss Hetherington. And do you have any cod-liver oil left?”
The shop had many things. Small and dusty, its shelves were sparsely set with out-of-date cans and packets of stale biscuits, brands which had died out decades before. Like the pub, it offered one face to passers-by and another to the locals. The vicar had rarely found the Miss Hetheringtons out of stock of anything, if you knew how to ask.
He filled his shopping bag and after a pointless pleasantry or two made his way back up to the church. He was slow today, dragging the shopping home. His sleep had been broken, an odd night of dreams which he couldn’t recall. He felt like he’d already walked five miles before he started.
St Michael’s stood to the south of the village on the rolling hump called Leatherman Hill. He never asked about that. Kelda was waiting for him in the church porch, wearing a soft blue wool dress from one of the donations boxes. Her white-blonde hair was combed, long and silky, and she smiled at him. The sight of her sharp little teeth seemed normal by now.
“Pe-ter.”
She took the shopping from him as if it was an empty bag. He had been surprised at how strong she was. Though not as surprised when he had learned her true age. Jenny Mainprize had been careful when she whispered to the finwife and told her what to say. Kelda had been born, or spawned, he didn’t like to ask, in the wild sea currents near the Orkneys, one hundred and nineteen years ago.
“We can have our lunch.”
He ignored the way the wool stretched over her breasts. Maybe he had been lonely, but he was a man of God and had a duty here. He struggled with two fantasies at night. One was that of Kelda coming to comfort him in his over-sized, creaking bed, the other was of converting a finwife to the ways of the Anglican. Neither seemed likely.
They spent the afternoon exploring the churchyard, reading dates and memorials. Kelda seemed interested, and he found the gravestones a sign of normality. The village had funerals and burials like any other parish, though he had never conducted one. Some of the stones were caved with unlikely ages, but he could live with that.
“Crop-ton.” said Kelda, tracing a name. “Cun-ning Folk. Like old man.”
“Yes, Harry.”
She pressed nearer to him, a warmth in her thin body which came from the afternoon sun.
“He send me back?”
He put his arm around her. “No, I don’t think so. He’s a… good man.”
After dinner she lay on the sofa in the vicarage while he tried to draft a sermon. It was getting close to the autumn solstice, a time when he could pretend to be a proper vicar.
He finished his notes a little before midnight. Kelda was asleep, her bare feet twitching. The soft webbing between her toes was almost attractive.
One swift whisky and he lay down, fully clothed, on his bed. He was searching for sense in the Gospel according to John when he drifted off.
The sea was a lonely place. Townsend dreamed of vast abysses under the waves, of a watery emptiness where he swam, lost, on currents which carried him away from everything he cared about.
And then there was warmth in his dream, like the night before. He imagined hands stroking his body, comforting him. He moaned as slender limbs entwined him, and two large eyes shone with pleasure…
Later, when the moon was dim, a particular chalk boulder near the edge of the village was moved. No-one noticed.
You can find more about the North Sea coast lore and finfolk at the link here whale-road, widow-maker .
Meanwhile, we’re busy with numerous other projects. Not only is Issue Two of Occult Detective Quarterly almost ready to go to the printers, but our concept anthology Their Coats All Red is being assembled as we scribble. The editors, old greydog and Matt Willis, now have a fantastic collection of tales, and are selecting the very best of those for 18thWall Productions.
Their Coats All Red: Dark Tales of Empire will contain strange stories which capture the feel of the high Victorian era. Stories such as those of soldiers marching under a parched South African noon to fight the Boer, soldiers who learn that Africa has its own purposes.
Young London ladies shipped with their husbands to quarters in Calcutta with little company save their Indian servants. Traders and planters in Malaya, fighting the monsoon shadows, and the forlorn garrisons in the Sudan. The sailors of the West Africa squadron, seizing slave ships off the Gold Coast.
The English woman who finds the beliefs of the local people to be far darker than anything in her book of ghost stories. The Zulu who trades his iklwa for a Martini rifle. The Egyptian who finds her officer lover will not acknowledge her in the street…
This will be an anthology with a difference, dwelling muchly on the horror and folklore of those peoples under the Empire. We’re rather pleased. And though there is no finwife, there are likely to be some different watery dooms awaiting you within.
We shall speak again soon, dear listener…
I think about things. I’m an older white author from Yorkshire. And the stories which come to me aren’t often set in Yorkshire (though it does happen). They begin as stories of strangers in strange places. Those strangers start to become fleshed-out characters – and then, occasionally, they turn out to be Black characters.
I tend to write through vision. Nothing mystical – I mean that I ‘see’ a story inside my head – usually a character, sometimes a snapshot scene, or a place where something is going to happen. And that shows me who is the natural narrator or protagonist. If I go against that, by levering in a different main character, the story usually goes horribly wrong and has to be scrapped.
Last year, I was in a bad mood with certain pieces of early 20th Century weird and historical fiction I’d been reading. A few good, or even great plots, but the most appalling caricatures of non-white people. Specific stories by Edgar Wallace and by H P Lovecraft spring to mind.
In response I wrote a tale, wisely or not, about a group of Black African villagers facing a kind of Lovecraftian horror in the 1920s. Why wouldn’t they react as any human beings, using their smarts, their best resources, their local knowledge and such equipment as they had to meet such a threat? What made an intelligent African villager less able to face mind-numbing horror than anyone else? Nothing, it seemed to me.
There’s no such thing as a generic African villager, obviously. So I drew on an area I’d read more about than others, the colonial Igbo territories in Eastern Nigeria. I tried to reflect reality as best I could within what was essentially a weird horror story – a fantasy, mixing real and invented geography. I’m sure I got some of it wrong, but that one was an attempt to ‘balance the scales’ after reading the Wallace. A Black writer familiar with Wallace’s work might have done it even better.
I’ve written other Black characters, mostly living in the 1920s and 1930s with specific backgrounds (hence the photos used here). I didn’t do it because they were ‘exotic’. I wasn’t trying to shoe-horn Black characters into stories to gain credit, look cool or ride a wave. As I say, I’m an ageing Yorkshireman – too late for that.
The ideas come to me naturally, in the same way that a Victorian mill tragedy with supernatural overtones (and an entirely white cast) might come to me the next day. Some I squash as too far beyond my knowledge, too inappropriate. Others I try. And I’ve really pondered about it.
I am not entirely dim. I think there are genuine issues when you do this sort of thing. I’ve also heard the counter-argument that all writing is made-up stuff, and you should just write whatever you want, with whoever you want in it. People can challenge me about my views – I’m an open, interested participant, not an immovable object.
But in so many stories the default position is to use white characters, even white middle-class characters. It can be seen as a safe option, and supposedly right for the market (I disagree, obviously). For me, this approach is an unchallenging, non-inclusive one that gives little thought to a wider world. I find it boring after a while, unless there’s an obvious reason due to setting (there can be). Is it true that white middle class writers should only delve into their own kind?
A Black woman in a roadhouse in 1927 is as human and complex as a white guy in a townhouse in 2017. If I’m any sort of writer, I should be able to learn and empathise with both. They should both be potential protagonists or antagonists.
So I don’t believe that it’s inherently wrong to write about characters and cultures outside of your direct experience. It isn’t inherently wrong for white people to write Black characters (or Han Chinese, or Inuit ones). But it is more demanding, and it should be. Its purpose has to be exploratory, not exploitative, because there certainly is such a thing as cultural mangling.
I see cultural mangling as grabbing trinkets from other cultures and putting them on white characters – or equally bad, on cardboard Black characters – because it looks good, without any thought. I’m also sympathetic to the idea that the more marginalised, oppressed or disenfranchised the culture/group, the more it’s better for the words to come from its own members, in one way or another.
It is wrong to do this sort of thing without holding yourself responsible for what you produce. Whenever you write about someone you don’t know, someone who has experiences different from our own, you risk creating a stereotype. You risk taking a facile look at a person, a culture or a situation which you don’t fully understand. If you really mess it up, then it becomes either offensive or ludicrous. On the other hand, to not try at all…
It goes much further than skin colour, of course. Black African isn’t the same as Black American, Black Caribbean or Black British, though they may share root concerns and histories. A Black female IT manager in Britain is unlikely to have had the same experiences as a Black male teacher in Detroit, or a cop in Lagos.
I once made the mistake of chatting about religion to the amiable (Black) father of one of my kid’s friends. Turned out he was a conservative, rampant Islamophobe, amongst other things. Skin colour/racial identity was the least of the barriers between us. The refugee Iraqi greengrocer up the road didn’t know the viewpoint of a Shia militiaman in Basra, or a Kurdish woman in Northern Iraq. And my local Indian off-license guy said he didn’t understand people from Pakistan, had no empathy with them.
There was plenty to learn from those three individuals – each was a human being, not a ‘representative’ for others in different circumstances.
Even limited knowledge can’t protect you from misunderstanding and misrepresentation. But if you write outside your own life, you can employ empathy, imagination – and research – to try and bridge some of the gap. When I write Black characters, I try to consider historical or cultural aspects which might have impacted on them, as well as the human strengths and weaknesses we share. Including things which I’ve never directly encountered, and which shouldn’t be just made up. And at times, you may well need a Black friend (or a few) to go through your stuff and be able to say honestly what they think about this aspect. Listen to them.
It’s a matter of respect. Respect for the culture, group, or person you’re writing about, and for the reader. Which leads to another aspect of my argument. It’s incredibly important that Black creators produce Black characters. I’m not just talking politically here – I have two personal reasons for saying it.
Firstly, I have a family with younger members in it. Were they Black, I would want them to grow up seeing Black people amongst their role models. I would want them to read books and watch films which had exciting or moving Black characters with whom they could identify.
Ideally, I would want them to have role models of all skin colours and genders/identities, and I would want them to have this chance, especially when young. Which means there has to be good, easily available SF, fantasy and weird fiction, with Black writers’ faces on the back cover – and Black characters on the front cover. And hey, those kids might want to write themselves one day.
Secondly, I write (mostly) in the field of strange fiction. I want to read unusual stories, different stories, and the best way to do that is to be able to see tales from many, many different creators. There will be takes on the weird which need a Black (or other) writer to explore properly, bringing a different perspective and history than mine. And as suggested above, there will be stories I’ve thought up that might only really work if written by a Black writer. As a writer and as a reader I want that diversity.
I take this aspect of my own work seriously, and so I want to be better informed. The very process of including Black characters has taken me to places I’ve never been. It’s exposed me to aspects of Black history and experiences which I might not have encountered otherwise. It’s a growth thing.
My opinion isn’t that valuable. It’s here because I have the space to express it, and because it does have a bearing on my fiction. You can learn more than I can ever capture through actually reading or buying weird and speculative fiction by Black authors. Through finding out about the reality of black history. And by giving support to people who are helping further things like black SF, fantasy and steamfunk in an exciting way.
I believe that we can move beyond our own lives and potentially write characters of many different creeds, colours and cultures – if we’re willing to learn. Even to learn when we probably shouldn’t do it. And admit that sometimes we’ll get it wrong. We can try, with good heart and with effort, to write out the characters who come to us.
END-NOTE: I’ve read a lot of articles related to the above – on cultural celebration, cultural appropriation and the kitchen sink. It’s possible to have your head explode trying to navigate it all. ‘Writing the Other’ by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward is useful to get your mind working if you’re a writer.
Balogun Ojetade’s blog is always a great source of news on Black creators, https://chroniclesofharriet.com, and Milton Davis, also in the States, does a lot of energetic creatorism. We try to regularly feature cool work by non-white creators here. Because it’s fun, not because we preach…
P.S. greydogtales is on holiday until the weekend, so we look forward to seeing you in a few days.