‘The Reformatory’ author Tananarive Due says one horror story made her scream
Erik Pedersen writes the Book Pages newsletter, devoted to authors, reading, books and bestsellers, each week.
Tananarive Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, “Ghost Summer: Stories” and “The Wishing Pool and Other Stories.” She teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA, and she is also co-author (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due) of a civil rights memoir, “Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.” Due was an executive producer on “Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror” for Shudder and she’s co-written the graphic novel “The Keeper” and an episode of “The Twilight Zone” with her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes. Due’s latest book, “The Reformatory,” is out now.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
I recommend different books according to the occasion, but I often find myself recommending Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred” as an introduction to her work. It’s a fantasy story with horror elements, although she is best known for writing science fiction. But it truly answers the question: What would it have been like to go back and forth in time to the antebellum slavery era?
Truly horrifying, but also insightful.
Q. What are you reading now?
I have a couple more short stories to finish in the anthology Jordan Peele helped curate called “Out There Screaming.” It’s so good that I really don’t want it to end!
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
I hear a lot of buzz about books on social media, so once I’ve heard enough raves, I run over to grab the audiobook.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
The earliest true impact of a book was Alex Haley’s “Roots,” which I read when I was 11. In some ways, that might be the book that has had the MOST impact on me overall, given how often I use historical fiction as a tool for teaching as well as horror. I read “Roots” and watched the miniseries, and soon after I did a school project called “My Own Roots” that my father drew illustrations for, based on an incident from our true history. Here’s a blog post about it.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
I have not yet read Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys,” which, like my new novel “The Reformatory,” is set at a fictionalized version of the Dozier School for Boys. I started to read the first page, but there was an immediate reference to Boot Hill, where my great-uncle Robert Stephens was buried, and I haven’t yet been able to go on. It felt very personal, and I expect the story is probably sad.
Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind?
Gloria Naylor’s “Mama Day” was electrifying to me because it centered a Black woman protagonist in a story of the metaphysical. I’d never experienced that blending in a story, and it really helped me better understand that I could write stories closer to my own experiences. Up until that point, the “canon” in my creative writing studies had steered me toward writing non-genre stories about white male characters having epiphanies. So “Mama Day” was completely eye-opening about a different way literature could look and feel.
I can’t think of a book I read that specifically felt exclusionary: I may have started books like those many times, but I do not finish or remember them.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
I love the way Nnedi Okorafor uses grief and elements of science fiction in her short story “Dark Home” in “Out There Screaming.”
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
The late L.A. Banks always had GREAT book covers with her protagonist Damali Richards, a vampire huntress, in books like “Minion” and “The Awakening.” She was so far ahead of her time! Those Black women were fierce and stylish, and they were appearing long before some other publishers were willing to put Black women on their book covers.
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I love, love, love audiobooks! The vast majority of my reading is on audio, since I can listen to audio while I’m walking, doing the dishes and driving. Robin Miles is my all-time favorite narrator, although I’m very curious to hear the audiobook for “The Reformatory” just released featuring Joniece Abbott-Pratt.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
Although I primarily write horror, the majority of my reading used to be comprised of so-called “literary” fiction or historical fiction, especially by Black authors. But lately, there is so much high-quality horror from so many different kinds of writers that horror is now 80 percent of my reading.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
Some of my favorite books are newer horror novels: “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones. “The Spite House” by Johnny Compton. And “Jackal” by Erin E. Adams.
Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?
I want to catch up on “A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James, which is in my queue. And I can’t wait to read “All the Sinners Bleed” by S.A. Cosby. I’ll also read anything Attica Locke has coming up.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
So many, but I’ll really start with my parents, the late Patricia Stephens Due and my 89-year-old father, John Due. My father was ALWAYS either reading or writing in my memory, so he set a great example as a reader. And my mother was sure to stock our house with encyclopedias, Black history comic books, and classics so we would have rich reading lives at home. She also made sure we had our library cards.
Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
The cover or plot will catch my attention, but I can usually tell from the first page whether or not a book has characters with depth or enough psychological realism to convince me that the story is actually happening and I can forget I’m reading a book. All these years later, I remember a line from Stephen King’s “The Shining,” when Jack Torrance thinks of the hotel manager as an “officious little prick.” And I still remember how he wrote that the cat, Church, in “Pet Sematary,” walked with a “lurch.” And I often cite how Walter Mosley described a refrigerator handle so well in one of his novels that it brought the entire kitchen to life. Sometimes there is a kind of specificity of language that is entirely immersive.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
Once, I was reading a novelette called “The Devil in America,” which is free online and it’s a horror story told in a fractured, nonlinear way that kept me off-balance from the start. And an early reference to Arthur McDuffie, a motorcyclist beaten to death by Miami Police in my youth, outright shocked me, since I’ve rarely heard him mentioned outside of Miami.
I was sitting outside with my computer, engrossed with this story, when a branch from the bushes behind me brushed the back of my neck…and I SCREAMED.
I’m a horror writer myself, and even as a reader I rarely feel the kind of “jump scare” from a movie theater, but I often chuckle when I remember that moment.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
I almost stopped writing “The Reformatory” when I heard that “The Nickel Boys” would be published. Colson Whitehead is one of my favorite writers, I knew it would be impactful (it won a Pulitzer!) and I didn’t think there would be room left for another novel fictionalizing the Dozier school. Luckily, my family and my agent encouraged me to keep writing.
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