Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul

by Leila Taylor

Leila Taylor takes us into the dark heart of the American gothic, analysing the ways it relates to race in America in the twenty-first century.

Haunted houses, bitter revenants and muffled heartbeats under floorboards -- the American gothic is a macabre tale based on a true story.

Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul explores American culture's inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning.

If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?

Genres: Nonfiction, Horror, Gothic, History, Race, Music, African American

207 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 12, 2019

Reviews

[Ross Blocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila ("lee-lah") Taylor is an outlier within an already niche subculture: a Black woman drawn to all things gothic. In Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul, she plays around with the definitions, conceptions and implications of all things dark, spooky, gothic, black, and Black. It's a wide-ranging collection of observations on life, belonging, music, film, history, architecture, decay, violence, terror, and the Black experience in America. There's no particular structure, but it's too interesting to be fragmented: we're just along for the ride. Taylor's writing is poetic and powerful, building up a swell of thoughts and emotions just before it delivers an unexpected sentence that stops you dead in your tracks. "Oh, damn." I was going to quote a few here, but each seemed robbed of potency outside of the carefully constructed passages within Taylor's engaging, astute, and very personal book. It's a quick, rewarding, and eye-opening read.

[Baal Of · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taylor's writing is masterful, elegant, and smart and her weaving of the topics of Gothic subculture with the history of racism in the USA is enlightening. This is the kind of book I wish I could make certain friends read, one in particular, but I know it would be roundly dismissed. Having been very active in the Austin Goth scene for a long time, I am aware of the how white it can be. I have one close black friend in the scene, but she has strong libertarian political leanings, and has never talked to me about her experience of race with respect to our crowd, so this book is a welcome dose of insight. There were three other black people that I remember being regulars at the clubs or at parties, but the fact that I can remember the number is telling. One difference with the Texas subculture that pushes against the whiteness is the substantial presence of many latinx who made up easily a third of most crowds.

Goth isn't just fashion, it is a sensibility and perspective on the world, a gothic perspective.

This is something that can be difficult to articulate to those on the outside. Even though I am no longer active in whatever moribund scene is still barley clinging to life, I still consider Goth to be part of my core identity, and if I am reading this correctly, Taylor also holds it as part of her core identity but with the additional complexity of her racial identity. Her careful and frequently painful articulation of that difficult intertwining is a substantial portion of the power of this book.

The bulk of this book is less about the Goth subculture, and more about racism in the US, which despite the protestations of many people, including people I know, is still going strong. For example, Taylor discussed a recent quote by Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith who said about her supporter Colin Hutchinson "If he invited me to a public hanging, I would be on the front row." I had not heard about this incident, so I did some reading on it. This is from 2018, not buried back in decades past. This is what Republicans mean by MAGA. I can't understand what it feels like to have this kind of public discourse aimed at me, but for Taylor and millions more it is real, and it is now.

I do have one specific criticism about Taylor's portrayal of atheism. She says "I don't trust the absolutism of either faith or atheism." and then later says "I never believed in a supreme being...". Her second statement of those two quotes is atheism, but she pulls the very common straw-man portrayal of atheism as position of absolute knowledge that there is no god, rather than the correct position which is one of belief (not knowledge) specifically a lack of belief in a god or gods.

To close this out, I'm going to give Taylor the last words:

How can you mourn the dead when the mechanics that made slavery possible are still churning?

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I'll be returning to again and again. Possibly the best I've read in 2020.

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I am going to keep this review shorter because I'm on my phone and it's a shorter book. This was really special to me as a lifelong goth kid and adult. What is great about this book is that it bridges certain topics in a way that allows it to appeal at times to both a white goth or interested audience that really needs to see some of the contained information as well as to Black goths/adjacent folks and everyone else. There are some things that if you are educated in the history of racial violence and white supremacy in the United States that may not be new to you. However if you are a person without that education or a white goth who needs that education, this book has you covered. At the same time it covers a lot of topics and analyses that were new to me and I'm sure would be new too many other people. Most importantly, I think this book will be a drink of water in the desert for black goth and goth adjacent people. I really enjoyed it and it met my expectations.

[Julia O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darkly is a nonfiction work that bridges the personal and the historical by interweaving bits of memoir into cultural analysis. In each chapter, Leila takes an element of the Gothic—monstrousness, the aesthetics of mourning, crumbling houses, a fascination with the color black—and explores how it relates to the experience of being Black in America, and to her personal experience growing up as a Black goth. In each discussion, she draws on a mix of personal reminiscences, historical accounts, classic Gothic literature, horror films, and pop culture (or alt-culture). The text wanders smoothly through loosely connected topics like the meandering paths of Green-Wood Cemetery (one of Leila’s favorite haunts), slowly drawing the reader toward the conclusion: Blackness is inherently gothic, and the American Gothic is inextricably tied up with Black history. From the horrors of slavery to the Jim Crow era and the racism that persists in our society today, American history reads like a Gothic novel where Black people are alternately the monsters, the victims, and the dark secret buried under the floorboards.

See my full review here: https://www.thegothiclibrary.com/revi...

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look into the gothic and Blackness and how they correlate. Mainly focusing on racism in the US, it features a wide range of topics including history, books, music and movies, with the occasional mention of goth staples.

As much as I liked how many different things were brought up, I would’ve liked it to be more cohesive as well as more analytical. Or rather, it to be just a straight up memoir. It was a mix between the two, which left me wanting both for more personal experiences and more information about the subjects brought up.

Nevertheless a great thought provoking read from a sorely needed perspective, especially within the goth scene.

[bweadbun · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 — found this randomly in a used bookstore, what a gem

[Marietta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much. I don't have a great knowledge of Goth culture, but the author's encyclopedic knowledge of her subject, along with a treasure chest of pop-culture references, made me want to know more. We meet a smart, angsty Black girl whose love of all things Goth as well as all things Detroit, becomes her way of framing her experiences as she develops into a smart, wry, still-a-bit angsty grown-up writer. I knew I was in good hands when Toni Morrison's Beloved was discussed early on - but through the lens of Goth's appreciation of the way we are haunted by lost love and by history, as well as the traditional view of the book as an exploration of the way American culture is haunted by the travesty of slavery. I've come away from her book with a new appreciation of the nuances of Goth expression, as well as a long list of things I need to read, watch, and hear.

[josie · Rating 5 out of 5]

really really spooky and lovely and good. a good companion piece to claudia rankine’s citizen (which she mentions) but these essays are their own thing in itself. somewhere between affect theory and black history and cultural crit of all things goth(ic)

[Mona Kabbani · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For those who survived, it must have felt like a living purgatory, something in between life and death, here and there, the known and the unknown. Limbo is supposed to be a space of waiting, something in between heaven and hell. But limbo also represents a state of oblivion and nothingness. It’s both a transition and a place of imprisonment, a home for the disappeared.”

Darkly by Leila Taylor is one of those absolute must read books for the horror community. I’m serious; if you claim to have a scholarly love or deep appreciation for the horror genre, you better pick up a copy. Not even just the content, but the writing, although essayist and informative, reads like one long gothic poem. It’s eerie and hypnotic, and akin to being take on a voyage across a depthless dark ocean.

Darkly takes us through the gothic heart of America, the cross-sections between horror and Black history. It draws parallels between fears personified in popular culture and the haunted history of the land. There are parallels I was aware of before reading this work, however, the rhetoric by Taylor is unrivaled and insightful. There are also parallels I was not aware of, old media bits and pieces I never knew existed and immediately looked up upon finishing, and histories on renowned works and music like Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday I did not know the context of in terms of creation and performance. I really could go on and on but Darkly is so information rich, I will continue my review forever unless I stop myself.

It’s going to be my mission now to get as many people as I can to read this book because I loved it so much. It absolutely warrants a re-read as well.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author presented some keen observations on the similarities and links between the gothic subculture and the black experience in American society and history. However, I wanted more of an analytic analysis, rather than her own experiences. It was a good book, but not my favorite.

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una maravilla, mezcla de historia personal y de todos los tropos del #AmericanGothic, especialmente los relacionados con la esclavitud, el duelo nunca cerrado y el gótico como reapropiación de una estética victoriana, pero subversiva, con análisis de obras conocidas como Beloved o Candyman y otras no tanto (al menos para mí) como el músico M. Lamar. Me pareció especialmente interesante para acabar con esa tontería que sólo gente de tez blanca puede ser gótica.

[Rom Mojica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila Taylor's writing is both eminently readable and incredibly informative - she makes this look easy, basically. A seemingly unconnected thought will start out and have you wondering how it's going to feed back into the central discussion of Blackness and gothness, and then she pivots in so gracefully and smoothly you don't even realize it.

I was most impressed by this in one of the last sections, talking about urban decay and ruins of modern buildings and houses, which finally ties in to a discussion about cities that sold a dream to Black Americans, eventually taking it away and leaving the infrastructure to crumble. Though she frames it through Detroit, it's easy to apply this to neighborhoods and areas of other cities that let Black people fall through the cracks, citing "Budgets" while strangely always having the money for white neighborhoods.

The only part of this book that didn't do much for me was the section on Afrofuturism, which doesn't really have much to say except as a kind of comparison to Afrogoth. Which doesn't take much from the book overall, almost feeling like it's providing a different option for people who might want it. Like she says, if Afrogoth is about digging up the past, Afrofuturism is about correcting it. But it's the weakest part regardless, which is alright because it's also: the shortest part.

Darkly is an easy recommendation, media and social analysis wrapped up together by a writer who's a perfect intro to these kinds of topics. It explores Blackness through the lens of gothness, but uses that as a leaping off point to talk about modern America and the history that always lurks in the background of this country. It's a hell of an achievement, and perfect for people new to Black studies or who are already entrenched and are looking for a new perspective.

[Rodney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A survey of black American history as seen through the eyes of a black female goth. The synthesis of the author's personal experiences with a wide breath of ideas re: race, art, music, film, philosophy and history is both fluid and fascinating. She's as comfortable in discussing Siouxsie Sioux and Bauhaus and Prince as she is in discussing the horrors of the middle passage and segregation. This is a smart and wholly unique book.

[KL Baudelaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody brilliant. (For context, I'm a white goth from Yorkshire). Taylor's book talks about goth culture and its Black aspects in a rich, nuanced, entertaining and enthralling way, and it feels so relevant for goth today. For me, this book feels like a point at which my aesthetic and my political/human interests are drawn together in a perfect storm of fascination, desire to know more, and desire to take action.

I can't do this book enough credit in a review, please read it!

[Vakaris the Nosferatu · Rating 5 out of 5]

all reviews in one place:
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu

About the Book: When people already look upon you as “other” due to sheer ignorance or lack of representation, such vile ideas as “goth is so white” only serve to deepen the rift between “them” and “us“. In short, but with plenty of details, this book weaves together America’s history, specifically the black history that is too often hushed and overlooked, and that of gothic subculture.

My Opinion: First of all, let me just gloat in the fact someone put it so well what a goth is and what it might entail, without any ridiculous elitism that many “elder goths” shun like they don’t do it with “it’s the music scene, you must at least enjoy the music” as if those dusty records matter any more than fanciful relics of a culture no one bothers to research deeper. This way some jackass eventually comes up with that saying above, and other morons repeat it, thinking it “trendy” or “cool” (you know whom I pointing at). And second of all, this is a damn good book. Author speaks in short, but there’s enough details to follow and remain interested from cover to cover, with witty, heartwarming, and scary, heartbreaking stories to emphasize the point. Truly, I cannot recommend it enough.

[Sucharitha Yelimeli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila Taylor has that super cool gift of being a writer who can describe intricate histories of subcultures and somewhat academic topics with a very approachable writing style, like hearing a friend talk about it.

Here she gets into the history of "goth" in America, simultaneously with the history of being Black in America, and where the two overlap and diverge, sometimes resulting in a collective forgetting on the part of America, sometimes making space for new subcultures to form.

She does an amazing job of unflinchingly looking at incredibly heavy topics like lynching and the North Atlantic slave trade, but also made me laugh several times with her descriptions of growing up trying to emulate goth culture in the suburbs, and gave me several spooky thrills writing about more typical goth fare like haunted houses and abandoned cemeteries in Scotland.

Would recommend for anyone interested in a creative and personal lense on growing up Black and goth in America.

[Rickee1368 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila Taylor explores what it means to be both Black and a goth in her evocative book Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul. Taylor takes a look at the gothic tradition through the lens of the Black history of America and its harrowing beginnings. Popular culture, architecture, music, and film are all used as exemplars of how Black Americans have affected and inspired, often from a place of oppression. Taylor also intersperses the narrative with her own experiences of growing up as a Black person who ascribes to the gothic lifestyle and gives her own interesting perspective. This is the second book I have read by Taylor and I am a fan of her style and the intriguing subjects she chooses. I am ready for more!

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. absolutely loved this book from start to finish. I also attended an online webinar with the author. She hits all of the notes and clearly connects the goth to the history of Blackness in the United States. I highly recommend this book. This was her first book and I hope that she writes more books in the future.

[Thomas Brassington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a good memoir, quite a good cultural study, but I think smashing the two together doesn't quite work (at least for me). Felt like two narratives fighting for time and space, rather than complementing each other more often than not

[Sohum · Rating 4 out of 5]

a deft work of criticism and analysis

[Izzy Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoughtful and convincing !!

[maja Robertshawe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prehaps the best non fiction book I’ve ever read. Every point she brings up is so compelling

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly well written and informative. Black is as goth as you can get. I would read anything by Leila Taylor in a heartbeat. She has a gift with her words to inform, challenge, and enchant her readers and I’m very grateful I stumbled upon this book!

[Billie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography/socio-political critique gave my understanding of Goth a Black lens.

[Autumn Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the comparisons made in the book - between books, ideas, quotes from founding fathers and the more unlikely sources from pop culture: horror films, tv shows, and even tumblr.

I also loved the constant references Taylor made - while reading I often stopped to look at a YouTube video, listen to a song, or add another book she mentioned to my goodreads want to read shelf.

My only critiques are more points of personal preference: the authors tendency to describe the entire plot of certain books/movies seemed unnecessary to get to the point or line/quote she got to.

And overall I found the structure of the book - loosely collected around the category set forth by the chapter title - a little difficult to follow and make sense of. Sometimes ideas repeated themselves in new contexts that made them more interesting and their arguments stronger. Other times, they seemed to connect to previous points a bit randomly.

Last point of critique: a personal frustration I tend to have with a Black people who were otherized/bullied tending to describe other (more traditionally “Black”) children they encountered in their childhood as “scary” and/or unoriginal in their personal self expression. Though this was obviously just a representation of the author’s childhood feelings and emotions, I would have appreciated a more clear and unmistakable denouncement of white supremacy as the source of all limited and limiting definitions of “Blackness”. And perhaps an acknowledgement that sometimes a Black child’s otherness is mistaken for and/or representative of their perceived proximity to whiteness - which is seen as dangerous by some Black children. Then the rejection of this otherness, though never an excuse for bullying, can be seen as a defense or protection mechanism.

Otherwise, I quite enjoyed the book - very interesting analysis of the gothic as a representation of a norm-rejecting, free spirited internal life.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate this book for what Taylor has to say about what it means to be both Black and Gothic in late 20th-century America. She breaks down how the racial, cultural, literary, and artistic histories of the gothic remain very much alive (undead?) today, and she shows us that blackness and the gothic soul of America co-exist in both urban spaces (such as Detroit) and suburban ones. I loved reading about Bauhaus and Siouxsie and queer gothic and much more, and I love how Taylor's brain works; she's super smart and her writing at its best is pointed and decisively persuasive. I finished this book not entirely clear about its structure—each chapter adds to the mix but as for the shape and arc of the narrative as a whole, I'm not quite sure. This book also needs another round of copy-editing. But if you're reading this you're probably gothic enough to withstand weird comma placements.

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to thank Leila Taylor for writing this book. It felt like she was singing (well, writing) my life with her words. There were some cool coincidences—we both went to Quaker schools and lived in western Massachusetts, but when I read “I was destined to smoke clove cigarettes and write bad poetry under bridges in rain” I felt utterly seen and it took me back to middle school when we would hang out in the cemetery writing poetry and making charcoal prints from centuries old headstones. I appreciate how she wove together the stories of Black tragedy and survival in America to reframe what’s considered gothic, outlining the sinister underbelly of America’s foundation and asking the question, ‘what’s more gothic than being Black in America?’ A final takeaway: “when normalcy is denied for centuries, the refusal of normalcy is a radical choice.”

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The proper subject for American Gothic is the black man, from whose shadow we have not yet emerged, that ours is a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation.
— Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (26%)

The image of goth as a subculture is a palette of black clothes and white skin. Despite the brown and black influences that run through the cultural gothic spectrum (Mexican Día De Los Muertos, AfroCaribbean hoodoo, and Ancient Egyptian symbols of the Dead), goth is perceived as Caucasian culturally and aesthetically. But I recall Egyptian ankhs and scarabs being just as popular an accessory as crucifixes and pentagrams. Goth borrows and samples from the ancient and the archaic regardless of religion, culture or ethnicity, but its reputation is that of a black on black wardrobe with a tubercular complexion. (42%)

It was my first experience of a culture shock within my own culture, and again I was assessed that my Blackness was somehow not Black enough, that I listened to the wrong music and liked the wrong things, and I was hit with a commodified identity crisis in which the things I consumed were indicative of my class and race. Before, the clothes I wore, the posters on my wall and the albums I listened to, categorized me as a person who liked a particular kind of music (unlike the girls into R&B or the boys into heavy metal). It was segregation based on taste not race. It was to my disappointment that those two things are more often than not considered conditional to each other, and of all the subcultures I could have picked to identify with I had to pick the whitest: goth. (8.2%)

I really appreciated this book as a Black kid who grew up goth in the suburbs, though in my case it was the 2000s, so more like emo kid aged into adult goth. Either way, I loved seeing how much of my own experiences could be found and reflected in earlier music scenes, and it was like seeing where my generation and I come in on the trajectory of Afro-goth history. We see so many images, studies, and histories of what it's like and what it means to be goth from the white perspective that it was refreshing to see how and from where this darkness could be seen in Black culture.

There’s an acceptance of white weirdness, an assumption that there will always be white folks on the fringes of society with subcultures and affiliations that rebel against conventional norms and societal expectations. But being Black in America is already kind of weird, so despite the mean and racist overtones, that flippant answer was somewhat right. Adding an extra layer of oddity on top of an already marginalized group, flies in the face of “respectability politics” and questions the validity of so-called Black authenticity. It’s a refusal to conform to social standards despite being taught that conformity to those social norms is the dream, the goal, the endgame, to finally for once not be the other. So when normalcy is denied for centuries, the refusal of normalcy is a radical choice. If the illusion of whiteness as the standard of an idealized American persists, Blackness by its nature repudiates that illusion. To then completely reject all notions of standardization is a double condemnation. (13.4%)

I had also just watched the Afro-Punk (2003) documentary, which paired nicely with this text. Nowadays you can find more than one black person at the punk show, but it's still only a handful of us. I liked how both the documentary and this book demonstrate the ways in which Black culture is goth: how hiphop can be goth and living in the projects can be goth. For those reading from the future, we just had Kendrick Lamar perform at the Super Bowl, and I kept thinking to myself while watching that this performance was actually very Afro-goth in its own way.

LeRoi Jones says that “each phase of the Negro’s music issued directly from the dictates of his social and psychological environment,” and nothing quite encapsulates the sound of the contemporary Black gothic as horrorcore, a subgenre of hip-hop in which the classic themes of racism, gang violence, drugs, police brutality, and poverty use the language of horror movies to tell their story . . . In “Diary of a Madman,” the Gravediggaz are in court, pleading insanity on a murder charge. The defense: the conditions of being a Black man in America, of surviving centuries of subjugation and inherited trauma and the attempt to thrive in a society that values you as a commodity but condemns you as a person is enough to drive a person insane. Living as a Black person is to exist in a state of madness and violence, which is not only inevitable, but it is a form of normalcy. (73%)

The Black gothic rips the mask off of the thief and the villain who would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Every time the veil is lifted, when the zombies get woke, when the skeletons come out of the closet, when the ghosts start complaining, is when America gets goth. (90%)

[Tram · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?”

In Darkly, Leila Taylor blends memoir, cultural critique, and gothic theory to explore the deep entanglement between Blackness and the Gothic. Taylor draws on horror films, literature, music, and personal memories of growing up Black and goth in Detroit and Boston, making the argument that Blackness is Gothic, as they both “are performative identities with foundations in transgression, a familiarity with death, aestheticized mourning, and a keen awareness of the darker side of human nature.”

Likes
-       In “Based on a True Story,” she speaks to the fact that Black horror in fiction is often taken from real, lived experiences, using Toni Morrison’s Beloved (inspired by Margaret Garner, an escaped enslaved person who killed her daughter to prevent her from a life of slavery) and Candyman (inspired by Ruth Mae McCoy, who was shot dead by an intruder who entered her apartment through the bathroom cabinet) as examples.
-       The chapter “American Monster” explores how American politics weaponize fear—particularly fear of Blackness—by casting Black people as the monstrous Other. Taylor argues that America is disturbingly comfortable with fear, allowing white oppressors to frame themselves as victims while demonizing the oppressed.
-       Her take on the history of “Strange Fruit,” as well as modern covers of it. [I’m curious about what her take would be on Hayley Williams’ “True Believer.”]
-       Learning that the word “gloomth” (coined by Horace Walpole) means those who turn wallowing in melancholy into an art form. It’s such an awkward but fitting word.
-       Her take on the fascination with urban decay is often divorced from the unjust economic conditions that led to such ruin, with a focus on Detroit, writing, “If Southern Gothic was about Postbellum America, Detroit certainly represents a post-Industrial American Gothic. It is a revenant city—'We hope for better days; we shall rise from the ashes’—burning and rising from the flames over and over again.”
-      The asides to Midwestern gothic stories.

Notes:
-       I didn’t really like the organization of this book. It’s marketed as part-memoir, part-cultural with loosely themed chapters. Still, it feels more like a conversation with your brilliant colleague who’s writing a dissertation. There are many fascinating examples that either don’t flow well together or need more exploration. I think this would have worked well as a collection of essays or if she had more room to dive into these topics deeply.

That being said, I recommend this book for fans of American history, gothic culture, and cultural critique.