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By the time I saw Ryan Coogler’s Sinners last week, it felt like I was already behind. The movie seemed to take hold of moviegoers’ attention as soon as it was released—though this didn’t come without a bit of oddly disparaging framing by certain outlets. Still, the movie has been on everyone’s minds, with many people reporting seeing it two or three times in theaters. Unsurprisingly, this also means there have been a number of think pieces and, yes, book lists. I tried my best to avoid these before seeing the movie myself so that I could form my own opinion.
I have to say that, even with its more extravagant and fantastical elements, I was able to slip into a familiarity that I later realized was courtesy of my southern upbringing, despite not having lived in the region for more than 10 years. I’ve gathered a group of books that each touch on the major themes and feelings in Sinners. They are, at times, grotesque, celebratory, ancestral, and spiritual—all evocative of the South.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Tonally, this novella fits the overall feeling of Sinners the best of all the books in this list. It is a retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s existential horror story The Horror at Red Hook, and is, in many ways, a reclaiming. Lovecraft was a raging racist (even for his time) who was influenced by Black people just as he despised us, and it’s kind of ironic (but also maybe just typical) that the same cosmic horror Lovecraft became known for explores exactly the same kind of all-encompassing existential dread that Black Americans have felt for hundreds of years in this land.
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard
By this time, even if you haven’t seen the movie, you may have surmised that vampires are used as a metaphor for the (sometimes literal) consumption of Black bodies in the name of Someone’s collective gain. Those Someones not being Black, obviously. In Woodard’s Lambda Award-winning book, enlsaved people’s claims of consumption are given credence. He connects cannibalism, homoeroticism, and the culture of consumption always needed to feed the beast that is colonialism.