What is Southern Gothic?
Southern Gothic takes the genre of Gothic fiction and places it in the American South. A hallmark of Gothic fiction is the haunting of the past in the present. In Southern Gothic, this often manifests as the looming specter of racism and slavery, or of poverty and war that continue to affect the region to this day. The genre also often plays upon the deep religious roots of the region as well as the folk magic that exists as a result of migration and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, such as hoodoo. Southern Gothic often deals with dismantling the myth of the idyllic Antebellum South, highlighting the dark, flawed history of the region and exposing the ways in which this history is often suppressed.
Another one of the biggest aspects of Gothic fiction is that the settings often involve abandoned or old places. Within Southern Gothic, this can take the form of derelict houses, empty former plantations, densely overgrown swamps, crumbling cemeteries, or sallow farmland. Within these landscapes, the stories that are told involve crime and violence, grotesque situations, and other sinister happenings.
If Gothic fiction seeks to upend ideas about morality and taboos, Southern Gothic does so in a distinctly American way that makes the genre a deep, rich well to explore themes about American tradition and Southern ideals.
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
The complete collection of stories written by Flannery O’Connor, who was monumental in her contribution to American fiction.
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Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard--a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape--haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail.
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Beloved by Toni Morrison
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe's house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
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Twilight by William Gay
Suspecting that something is amiss with their father's burial, teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought for him. Worse, they learn that the undertaker, Fenton Breece, has been grotesquely violating the town's dead, enacting his perverse fantasies. Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler becomes obsessed with bringing the perverse undertaker to justice. What follows is an adventure through the Harrikin, an eerie backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, and eccentric squatters.
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Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty.
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Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
In the swamps of the Florida Everglades, Ava Bigtree is next in line of the Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty, which is in decline, overtaken by a sophisticated competitor. As her family members variously die, disappear, depart and defect, Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, is left to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.
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The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, we follow a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s, including a tormented veteran who is obsessed with pouring blood on his “prayer log,” a husband-and-wife serial killer team, and a spider-handling preacher.
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Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
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