Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction

<div>In <i>Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction</i> Jerry Rafiki Jenkins 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 shows that despite their various motivations for harming and killing Black people these monsters embody the horrors that emerge when <i>Black American</i> is disassociated from <i>American</i>. Although these monsters of anti-Blackness are dangerous because they can terrorize Black people with virtual impunity their anti-Black sadism as Jenkins calls it is what makes them repulsive. Jenkins examines a variety of these monstrous forms in Tananarive Due's <i>The Between</i> Victor LaValle's <i>The Changeling</i> Octavia Butler's <i>Kindred</i> Nnedi Okorafor's <i>Who Fears Death</i> 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.</div>