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vampires and creoles
I am currently reading Interview With the Vampire, which I will be teaching in a few weeks for my Horror course.
The most interesting thing about the first fifty pages or so is the way that race flickers in the background. The early action in the book's narrative all occurs around plantations near New Orleans, a city which receives special attention as a site of racial and ethnic mixing:
"There was no city in America like New Orleans. It was filled not only with the French and Spanish of all classes who had formed in part its peculiar aristocracy, but later with immigrants of all kinds, the Irish and Germans in particular. Then there were not only the black slaves, yet unhomogenized and fantastical in their different tribal garb and manners, but the great growing class of the free people of color, those marvellous people of our mixed blood and that of the islands, who produced a magnificent and unique caste of craftsmen, artists, poets, and renowned feminine beauty. And then there were the Indians, who covered the levee on summer days selling herbs and crafted wares. And drifting through all, through this medley of languages and colors, were the people of the port, the sailors of ships, who came in great waves ... Then add to these, within years after my transformation, the Americans, who built the city up river from the old French Quarter with magnificent Grecian houses which gleamed in the moonlight like temples."
This is not the first time in the past few weeks where I've been reading American horror fiction and race has come up as a substantial theme. It is worth noting that Rice's second novel is not horror fiction but rather historical fiction about the free people of color: obviously something she had some significant interest in.
Here is a website covering the "history and genealogy of the Free People of Color in 19th century New Orleans." Labels: book_commentary, horror, race |
Monday, January 07, 2002
10:11 PM
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