Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror & Delight ed. by Shelly Page (review)
2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2023.a904465
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Gender, Feminism, and Media
ResumoReviewed by: Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror & Delight ed. by Shelly Page Meg Cornell Page, Shelly, ed. Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror & Delight; ed. by Shelley Page and Alex Brown. Wednesday/St. Martin's, 2023 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250892980 $24.00 Paper ed. ISBN 9781250892966 $12.00 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250892973 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 Using the stage of Halloween night, the twelve stories collected in this QPOC horror anthology depict the struggles and celebrations of groups often rendered invisible and reclaim narratives leveled at queer people of color. Some tales stand out as best delivering on this premise: Sara Farzan's "A Brief Intermission" provides a haunted night at the drive-in with Afsaneh, whose confrontation with ghosts from the white-washed, heteronormative past will likely feel all too present to QPOC readers. Meanwhile, on a smaller haunted screen, "Nine Stops" by Trang Thanh Tran follows the timestamps of a disturbing viral video, which bids "if you stop watching, you will die"; with inexorable pacing along nine subway stops, the narrative adeptly weaves the complexities of queer intergenerational mourning with the intimate horrors of mourning racial violence in a digital space. Contributions like Page's "Anna" and "Knickknack" by Ryan Douglass both bring well-grounded romance and sardonic comedy to the anthology. While each story begins as a babysitting night gone wrong thanks to Oujia-board nonsense, Page's Elise explores how intimacy scares her far more than ghosts, and Douglass' Noah offers an age-accurate narrator who struggles to parse his friend's maybe-queer flirtations even as he and a band of other teens seek to rescue his brother Carl from a vengeful ghost-clown kidnapper, Scooby-Doo style. Readers who enjoyed Transmogrify: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic (BCCB 05/23) may find themselves similarly enthralled by this queer, diverse Fright Night. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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