Chauncey Mabe

It’s sold as a horror novel, but it’s so much more than that. The author uses horror tropes to explore real life miseries such as racism, murder, grief, corruption, and the tenor of daily life in an oppressed African American community in what seems to be the 1970s. Fantasy elements, such as calling states “kingdoms” greatly enhance the tone and atmosphere without obscuring in any way that she’s concerned about life in this country, on this planet. Creatures of Passage, for all of its fantastical, horror, and folklore is a literary novel from top to bottom, and I haven’t read a better one in recent memory