Great Horror Anthology

 Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror edited by Jordan Peele

Out There Screaming book cover

I haven’t read many anthologies of horror stories lately. It’s interesting since when I would teach, I always tended to use anthologies, but I guess that sometimes I’m not sure about the overall quality. Yet, with Jordan Peele editing this one, I have been looking forward to reading this since it was announced. I really enjoyed all of the stories in this book, and I think that many of them stood out among the others. It made me want to read more from some of the authors from this collection. N.K. Jemisin’s story is a really interesting one; it’s got elements of the kind of irony from “The Monkey’s Paw” but with a modern twist of surveillance and police brutality. It’s also told in a really brutal manner, and I loved it. “Lasiren” was a strange, but interesting mermaid tale, and I think the kind of folk-tale stories were some of my favorites. I really liked this one since it also combined elements of cultural stories. Similarly Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World” was so strange and disturbing, but also great. Combining body horror with folk stories of Obeah magic, and twisting the Obeah man to give the power to a woman was really interesting. I really loved Rion Amilcar Scott’s story “A Grief of the Dead”—again, it combined some kind of folk elements (like the screechers, zombies), but also dealt with modern issues like mass shootings and chat rooms. My favorite story might have been Nicole Sconiers’s “A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree”, which takes the kind of phantom hitchhiker story and totally reinvents it with a vengeful ghost tale taking place on 76 right by the Conshohocken Curve. I did a double take when I read that, but the story is really compelling and creative. All of the stories are really good to read, and I didn’t find myself wanting to skip any of them, but these were some of the stories that stood out (as well as P. Djèlí Clark’s story).  I’m glad that I read this collection, and that I have some new authors to explore.