“I can tell right off there’s something peculiar about them,” Maryse thinks, as she and the Black women who hunt with her watch a Klan parade from the city’s rooftops. Set in Macon, Ga., in 1922, Ring Shout follows young sword-wielding Maryse Boudreaux as she hunts the beings she calls Ku Kluxes. In fact, I’m surprised this stellar novella hasn’t already been snapped up for adaptation rights. So add his new Ring Shout to the growing canon of stories that use fantasy and horror to explore racist history, like Lovecraft Country and Watchmen. Djèlí Clark’s acclaimed speculative fiction includes short stories like the Nebula- and Locus-winning “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” and books like the Hugo-nominated “The Black God’s Drums.” He’s also a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine and an academic who studies comparative slavery. Ring Shout has a starred review from Publishers Weekly.You already know the Klan is bad. Want more Black Girl Magic suggestions? Epic Reads has a good list consider navigating over to Black Girls With Magic & Books Club.
If you loved Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation and The Deathless Divide, make sure to get Ring Shout on your reading list, STAT. The characters are so vivid, so strong, they could be sitting next to you, whispering their tale. The storytelling is rich and haunting, filled with humor, action, and body horror. Ring Shout is incredible dark fantasy, loaded with Gullah tradition and African-American folklore and main characters that readers will immediately take to. The Ku Kluxes have plans for Maryse, but so do the mysterious Aunties that appear to her.
Teaming up with a gloriously profane sharpshooter named Sadie and a WWI vet, Cordelia, who goes by the nickname Chef, the three have a gift for taking down the Kluxes, until Butcher Clyde, a Klan leader, makes it personal with Maryse. Maryse Boudreaux is a woman with a gift for seeing the real faces of the Ku Kluxes – the demons who feed on the Klans, who are the racist humans whose black hate leaves them open to possession. It’s 1922, DW Griffith is a sorcerer whipping legions of demons into a frenzy with his film The Birth of a Nation, and a trio of young Black women are all that stands in their way. Djèlí Clark ( The Black God’s Drums) creates an incredible alternate America, where the Ku Klux Klan are actual monsters, in his latest book, Ring Shout.
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