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The Black Girl Survives in This One - October 2025 Book Club Reading

Falselogic

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
This is an anthology of YA horror stories that centers Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, and who survive to the end. The collection contains stories written by Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The collection was edited by Evans and Fennell.

I believe this collection is in a response to the trope in horror, and really other, genres where the black character always dies first.
 
I'm not really sure what to expect from this one since I don't read YA, but I'm always happy to see new representation for people who have been needing it.
 
Oh I liked that first story.

Edit: Felt silly double-posting so I'm just going to edit this. I am halfway through and really enjoying this. I like how varied they are in setting (space, the 1970s, current day) and tone. The Black Pride story was especially cool.
 
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Just placed my hold; I've been busy with other stuff and there's no wait list at the library, so I should have it by the end of the week.
 
Read the first two stories. I am a little dismayed that in the first one it appears that the Black Girl does not survive! I will echo @Violentvixen's comment that I did not expect but do appreciate the breadth of the stories. The first one is current day and the next one is far future.
 
Falselogic said:
in the first one it appears that the Black Girl does not survive!
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Does to the end of the story at least! A good creepy ending I thought.

Finished it. Harvesters, Black Pride, Inheritance, and Foxhunt were my favourites. I want to read a full book with what Local Color is setting up, that one intrigued me.

I also wasn't aware of soucouyants until this book. Spent a bit more time reading up on them after finishing the book and found them to be a super interesting and creepy monster. Really interesting to have the same grain of rice obsession as vampires but also fireballs?!
 
Falselogic said:
I loved Queeniums for Greenium! MLMs are a horror story!
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I finished it. This was a fun anthology that was mostly really good. It was interesting to see how the writers worked with the tropes of horror and subverted them. I still think my favorite was Queeniums for Greenium. MLMs and the Stepford Wives is a perfect combination.

I also enjoyed Black Girl Nature Group (real Get Out vibes with this one) and Inheritance (I also didn't know about soucouyants). Thank you for nominating this one @Violentvixen I don't think I ever would have picked it up otherwise.
 
Finally got this one in yesterday (I swear it's the longest any book that didn't have any holds on it has taken to get to me) and started it last night. I'm a few stories in now but none of them have really grabbed me yet. Hoping to turn that around as I go on!
 
Finished this last night. I'm sorry to report that this one never really did much for me! I felt like a lot of the stories were great ideas for the beginnings of novels, but they all ended so quickly that it felt like there was some kind of page limit being enforced. For the same reason, along with the fact that we're explicitly told by the title of the book how any given story was going to end, I found it hard to get emotionally invested in too many of them. This is a particular problem I have with any media where you already know how it ends -- it's extremely difficult to create meaningful stakes when you know if someone is going to live or die, doubly so when you're barely given any time with the characters. (To be clear, I mean it's a Me Problem.) If the authors had been allowed to stretch out a bit and develop things a bit more, maybe I would've felt more strongly about the book overall.

Having said all that, I'm extremely aware that I was not the target audience for this book, so my opinions don't really carry a lot of weight either way. I'm glad it exists for the people who need to see themselves in it. Thanks for the pick VV, I also wouldn't have read it if not for that.

(You know what I do want is a whole book expanding on the early story about the space looters. Of all the stories that felt like they were the first chapter of a larger novel, this one gave me that vibe most of all.)
 
lincolnic said:
For the same reason, along with the fact that we're explicitly told by the title of the book how any given story was going to end, I found it hard to get emotionally invested in too many of them. This is a particular problem I have with any media where you already know how it ends -- it's extremely difficult to create meaningful stakes when you know if someone is going to live or die, doubly so when you're barely given any time with the characters.
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That's really interesting to me, as I'm often the opposite. And in this case it made me more willing to read a horror collection, because I knew someone would survive, and the fact that it was YA meant it wouldn't be uncomfortably dark or bleak which I wasn't in the mood for.

But in the spirit of your post, my giant baby opinions about horror also probably shouldn't hold much weight, ha!
 
Violentvixen said:
That's really interesting to me, as I'm often the opposite. And in this case it made me more willing to read a horror collection, because I knew someone would survive, and the fact that it was YA meant it wouldn't be uncomfortably dark or bleak which I wasn't in the mood for.
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I remember when Rogue One came out and I was like "Why would they make a movie about this? We already know the ending! Everyone dies getting the Death Star plans!" I ended up seeing it anyway and sure enough, I just could not get invested in what was going on. Come to think of it, that was probably the first time I actively realized this was a thing with me.
 
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