![]() ![]() Being a social scientist as well as an artist, I could not help but poke at the intellectual possibilities of smashing together my politics, sensibilities - my very Blackness - against Lovecraft’s dark and cosmic creations. ![]() Normally this would be a reason to turn away from an artist as an influence on your own work unless of course, you were trying to compose something in the vein of a racist. Other instances are more interpretive, but by no means a stretch once one accounts for the author’s prejudices. There are obvious examples: In the story “The Rats in the Walls” a character’s dog is named “Nigger-man.” Lovecraft penned a poem entitled “On the Creation of Niggers,” which is as bad as it sounds. Lovecraft’s racism manifested more in correspondence with others (of which there are copious amounts) than in his art, but the two are inextricably linked. Lovecraft, you see, was not just one of the most influential figures in fiction of the last century, he was also an unapologetic White supremacist. The thing that separates me from about 99% of the artists who engage Lovecraft’s literary bric-a-brac of ghouls, aliens, and existential dread is that I am Black. Lovecraft’s canon of creatures and old gods - which places me in a long line of thousands who have used the writer’s public-domain ingredients to build stories. ![]() The idea was to create a contemporary parable that utilizes elements of H.P. Six years ago, I started writing a horror novel. ![]()
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