Black Women Writing Vampires

Race, Gender, and Survival in Black Women’s Vampire Fiction

The white vampire trope became a permanent presence in literature because the narratives explore the dual horror and seduction of living in close proximity to the other.^[1] On the other hand, the vampire figure doubles as a metaphor to investigate human desire. Generally in contemporary vampirism texts,^[2] the white hero(ine) accepts the task of preserving and restoring the natural order of white society by hunting and killing the othered being. Illuminated by the rarity of people of color’s appearance as community members who are equally concerned for their safety in narratives, it is possible that when bodies of color do appear, they are embodiments of the hunted vampire.

With human desire in mind, Kendra Parker suggests that, “When considering the term ‘vampire,’ it is important to view it as a socially constructed body that becomes a scapegoat for sexist, racist, and homophobic value systems, which are manifest in the mythology of the vampire.”^[3] Indeed, such narratives perpetuate intolerance for groups of people whom society ethnically and sexually marginalizes, and the vampire is a trope that allows readers to explore larger suppressed social and cultural desires, and grapple with societal respectability politics and cultural difference.

Yet, while the white vampire figure has intensely saturated the horror genre, its roots are not limited to 19^th-century Europe and America. In fact, Jerry Rafiki Jenkins explains that in precolonial Nigeria, Yoruba people used the term “‘witch-wives’ to describe their version of vampires, which were untrustworthy women who secretly sucked the blood of their husbands and of the children of their other wives and vampires of the Hausa tribe in Niger were referred to as ‘soul-stealing witches.’”^[4] Adding to Jenkins’ suggestion, in Skin Folk (2001), a collection of short stories, Naylo Hopkinson explains of the vampire figure that,

Throughout the Caribbean, under different names, you’ll find stories about people who aren’t what they seem. Skin gives these skin folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. They may be owls. They may be vampiric balls of fire. And always, whatever the burden their skins bear, once they remove them—once they get under their own skins—they can fly. It seemed an apt metaphor to use for these stories collectively.^[5]

Specifically, in her short story “Greedy Choke Puppy,” Hopkinson explores fluid representations of the Haitian “lagahoo,”^[6] and the Trinidadian “soucouyant.”^[7] In the Caribbean cautionary tale, she expands on the notion that the vampire can be used to explore individual and cultural suppression, replacing the white, male vampire with Black women soucouyants to critique societal expectations of Black women and reaffirm Black women’s agency. Ultimately, it is possible to (re)imagine vampires as stand-ins for an oppressed group of people whom white supremacist society seeks to keep in subordinate positions—in this case, Black bodies—since the vampire figure is politically threatening because it disrupts and challenges human dominance and power through its ability to bend humans to its will by way of compulsion or venom.^[8]

Like Hopkinson, other African American novelists repurposed the traditional vampire story of the pale nightwalker to include people of color. Specifically, in African American women’s literature the Black female vampire, according to Kendra Parker, “functions as both a symbol of oppression and progress; she is linked to sexuality and imperial ideologies as well as to cultural fears of difference—sexual deviance, gender role deviance, the blurring of class lines, the spread of disease, and the deterioration of the family.”^[9] The dual embodiment of Black female vampires is highlighted explicitly in Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (1991). Gomez’s narrative is heralded as the first Black woman vampire novel and traces the life span of the title character, Gilda, a two-hundred-and-something-year-old African American lesbian vampire.

Gilda becomes a vampire after she escapes enslavement, but instead of seeking revenge, she uses her venom to give donors positive thoughts and messages about his/her life. Ultimately, life for Gilda and her family is less about privilege and power and more about learning and progression. Gomez’s complication of the implications within the venom exchange challenges the historical mythology of vampires as predators or masters over their victims, revealing the mutual benefits in symbiotic relationships. On a deeper level, the text offers critical commentary on white society’s responsibility for hindering human progress. Similarly, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005) builds on the Black woman vampire figure to bear witness to Black women’s struggle to heal from emotional, psychological, and physical trauma.

For instance, Fledgling deepens the legacy of the Black woman vampire by positioning Shori not only as a genetically altered being but as a living archive of trauma. Specifically, her body carries knowledge her mind no longer holds. Waking up without memory, family, or language, Shori’s survival becomes an act of restoration. We witness her piecing together identity from blood, instinct, and inherited response. In this, Butler offers a speculative meditation on epigenetic memory, which is the idea that trauma, survival skills, and emotional reactions can be passed down biologically, etched not only into cultural consciousness but into the very structure of the body.

Though Shori cannot recall her past, her body remembers how to feed, to protect, to love and this becomes her literacy. Her scarred flesh, her accelerated healing, her venom are evidence of ancestral resilience. So, rather than offer revenge, Butler offers us restoration. Shori is not allowed the comfort of full memory or perfect clarity. Instead, she must rebuild her identity from fragments. And yet, it is through this fragmented recovery that Butler stages a profound reckoning with Black women’s historical role as both victim and healer, body and battleground.

**If you want to read Naylo Hopkinson’s “The Greedy Choke Puppy” short story, it’s available on the paid version.

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^[1] The concept of “the other” and the practice of othering present an us/them binary, where the European body is the standard and the African body is perceived as abnormal. Edward Saïd, in his study of Orientalism, explores how the logical problem of othering, presenting “the other” as something other than oneself, is problematic and how the negative consequences in the realm of human geography deny outside persons human rights. In considering the perceptions of Africans in the New World, their perceived alien-like rituals, practices, and physical appearances contribute to the degradation of their worth as humans.

^[2] such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series (1997-2003), the spinoff television series Angel (1999-2004), the Twilight Saga books (2005-2008) and the film adaptation (2008), and The Vampire Diaries television series (2009-2017), and its spinoff The Originals (2013-2018), to name a few,

^[3] Kendra Parker, Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977-2011, (xv)

^[4] Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction, (2).

^[5] Naylo Hopkinson, “Greedy Choke Puppy” Skin Folk (2001), 1.

^[6] Naylo Hopkinson, “Greedy Choke Puppy” Skin Folk (2001), 132.

^[7] Naylo Hopkinson, “Greedy Choke Puppy” Skin Folk (2001), 138

^[8] In canonical texts, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series (1997-2003), the spinoff television series Angel (1999-2004), the Twilight Saga books (2005-2008) and the film adaptation (2008), and The Vampire Diariestelevision series (2009-2017), and its spinoff The Originals (2013-2018), to name a few, the white hero(ine), then, accepts the task of preserving and restoring the natural order of white society by hunting and killing the othered being. Unfortunately, though, historical texts and the aforementioned narratives perpetuate intolerance for groups of people who society ethnically and sexually marginalize.

^[9] Kendra Parker, She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, xiv