Halloween is right around the corner and we believe this is the perfect excuse to explore Black Folk Heritage through African American Ghost stories. To get you started, we have compiled a list of books to add to your collection. Check out the books below and be sure to share your favorite stories with us on social media using the hashtag #blacksouthernbelle
Black Folk Heritage: Books Featuring African American Ghost Stories to Explore
The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural
This Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Award Winner from beloved author Patricia McKissack offers a “stellar collection” of “ten original stories, all with a foundation in African-American history or culture” (School Library Journal).
In that special half-hour of twilight—the dark-thirty—there are stories to be told. Mesmerizing and breathtakingly original, these tales are inspired by African American history and range from the time of slavery to the civil rights era. With her extraordinary gift for suspense, Patricia C. McKissack has created a heart-stopping collection of lasting value, a book not quickly forgotten.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2MPdnl6
Moaning Bones: African-American Ghost Stories
A floating woman pleads “Find my child,” an empty rocking chair rocks back and forth, ghostly dancers waltz in a deserted mansion, and a mysterious “thing” leads an orphan child to a jar of coins, in a collection of traditional African-American ghost stories.
Link to purchase: https://amzn.to/2OZKpBG
Steele Secrets: A Young Adult Ghost Story
Ghost in the graveyard is no longer a game. The dead need her help.
Mary Steele is your typical teenage bookworm. Until today, she had told her mom everything, but after she meets Moses, the ghost of enslaved man, she suddenly has a secret. She’s not the only one.
This young adult, supernatural novel has heart and oomph. If you like small town intrigue, the mysteries of history, and spunky female narrators, Steele Secrets won’t disappoint. Pick up the first book in the Steele Secrets series today.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2pEqYUf
Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fictions
In Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fictions, Arthur Redding argues that ghosts serve as lasting witnesses to the legacies of slaves and indigenous peoples whose stories were lost in the remembrance or mistranslation of history.
Authors such as Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko deploy the ghost as a means of reconciling their own violently repressed heritage with their identity as modern Americans. And just as our ancestors were haunted by ghosts of the past, today their descendants are haunted by ghosts of contemporary crises: urban violence, racial hatred, and even terrorism. In other cases that Redding studies—such as James Baldwin’s The Evidence of Things Not Seen and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child—gothic writers address similar crises to challenge traditional American claims of innocence and justice.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2oL62ew
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Michiel is a Black Southern Belle living a lowcountry life. I love all things fashion, home decor and southern! When I am not running around doing fun stuff for Black Southern Belle, I live in antique stores and have a minor obsession with historic homes :)
