In Conversation With Black Horror Writer Tananarive Due

The professor and author will talk about her new book 'The Reformatory' at SPL tomorrow, Nov. 1.

by Agueda Pacheco Flores

The first misunderstanding people have about Black Horror is that there is even such a thing as Black Horror, according to Tananarive Due, a professor of Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA.

"I think after Get Out, the [next] biggest misunderstanding was that Black Horror always had to be about racism as a monster," Due said in an interview with the Emerald. "The biggest misunderstanding about Black Horror is that it's one thing when in fact, Black Horror is as diverse as the experiences of the creators who write it and create it."

Aside from being a UCLA professor, Due also produced the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror and she's worked with Jordan Peele, the director who's credited with starting a Black Horror renaissance. Now her new book, The Reformatory, is set to release on Halloween. She'll be discussing her first full-length novel in 10 years with local writer Nisi Shawl this Wednesday, Nov. 1, at Seattle's Central Library. The event is free, but registration is required.

The Reformatory takes place in 1950s' Florida and follows Robbie Stephens Jr., a 12-year-old Black boy sentenced to half a year at the Gracetown School for Boys. But Gracetown is far from being a traditional "school." Instead, Robbie comes to a segregated prison full of the ghosts of other boys who lived and died there.

In reality, The Reformatory is inspired by true events concerning one of Due's ancestors. In 2013, Due was contacted by the Florida State Attorney General's Office. It was then she learned about her great uncle, Robert Stephens, who died and was buried at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, when he was 15 years old.

"At the time, I had never heard of this institution, although I quickly learned that there were books about it," said Due. "My father and I initially went to a meeting where we heard from survivors — Black and white — of this horrible institution."

Eventually, the body of her great uncle was exhumed and given a proper funeral and resting place. An autopsy revealed Due's great uncle had died with such a severe ear infection that the damage from the infection could be seen in the skull. The experience left Due impacted.

"I knew I had to write about this in some way," she said.

Due visited the school grounds many times, and she researched and read incessantly. Still, the work was difficult because of how emotionally charged it was.

"I mean, just the horror of having a cemetery on the grounds of a supposed school that was actually a work farm and prison, it really struck me, but I think I realized pretty quickly that I did not want to go the route of a memoir or trying to write it as a straight historical," Due said.

With that in mind, Due decided to write a novel — one that would honor the memory of her great uncle and the lives of all the unnamed boys who died at Gracetown.

Due doesn't know much about the life of her great uncle, except that he was stabbed to death and he died with an ear infection. These details make their way into the book, but so does the spirit of her father and late mother, both Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame inductees, who inspire different characters in the book attempting to save Robbie from the throes of the school.

After countless hours of writing and research, Due said the book is also dedicated to all children currently stuck in a modern-day horror story of their own: the prison industrial complex.

"I intentionally made Robert's offense a schoolyard kind of kick because those are the kinds of incidents parents are dealing with even today, where they find police at their door, or their children are taken away to spend the night locked up with strangers," she said. "I wanted The Reformatory to be about the present as much as it's about the past."

📸 Featured Image: Tananarive Due, professor, author, and documentary producer, will speak tomorrow, Nov. 1, at the Seattle Public Library about the Black Horror genre, and her new book "The Reformatory." (Photos courtesy of Simon & Schuster.)