August 2025
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    I have been gushing about Sinners to everyone who will listen, ever since I watched it last week. It immediately went on my favourites list and I was in complete awe of how alive and textured the film felt. It felt like a living breathing thing. I'd love to read a book (or five) in that same vein.

    While watching it, I was reminded of P. Djèlí Clark's writing. I absolutely adore his books, so I guess something similar would be great. Dark but not necessarily horror, I don't mind heavy subtext, I do like recontextualised history like Clark does. I loved the sense of community in Sinners. While I'm not necessarily looking for works of fiction by Black writers, I am looking for fiction that draws on folklore/mythology and weaves that into historical contexts. I imagine there is indigenous fiction out there that would also fit the bill. I would like the setting to be in North America.

    I'm basically looking for Ring Shout but not Ring Shout, if you get me. I have also read and loved The Deep by Rivers Solomon which does something similar. If any of their other works fits the description above, let me know.

    (Please, for the love of god, do NOT recommend Lovecraft to me. Thanks.)

    GO WATCH SINNERS! It's fantastic.

    by captain-ignotus

    6 Comments

    1. dalidellama on

      Possibly *Trail of Lightnings* by Rebecca Roanhorse. It’s set in Dinétah after the white world flooded and the old powers returned.

    2. Wise_Whole9381 on

      Hey u/captain-ignotus ! If you’re looking for something in the same vein as Sinners and Ring Shout, check out A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger.. Indigenous folklore, rich worldbuilding, and that same textured, myth-meets-history vibe.

      I’ve got it available digitally. If anyone else wants recs like this, just shoot me a message

    3. ollyollyollyolly on

      Lovecraft Country. It isn’t Lovecraft, which i also don’t like, but i enjoyed this book a lot. Also, not history really at all, but a fantastic satire with one close eye on the past is Chain Gang All Stars. I like books that involve race and comment on it without being preachy or just about race and Adjei-Brenyah fits.

    4. dalidellama on

      Oh, also Daniel José Older’s Outlaw Saints duology, plus the Shadowshaper Cypher and Bone Street Rumba books.

    5. Folk by Zoe Gilbert’s gave me similar vibes in terms of folklore blurring the line between itself and rational life. It’s not black literature, but I think it merits the tonal comparison. It’s about a community of people who live slightly isolated by the coast, and they have rich local traditions. Strange things happen that reinforce them, and some things people forget the origins of, but they still impact normal life when people aren’t expecting them.

    6. Feralbritches1 on

      – Fledgling: Butler
      – Buffalo Hunter: Jones
      – Ring Shout: Clark
      – Lone Women: Lavalle
      – Vampire of El Norte: Canas
      – House of Hunger: Henderson
      – The Ballad of Black Tom

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