I am far from an expert on the relationship between the horror genre and people of color, but I do have an interest in the topic ever since reading The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle’s take on the atrociously racist Lovecraft story The Horror at Red Hook. That novella opens with a startling dedication: “For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings.” It left me wondering what it must be like to love a genre which historically is dismissive of one’s own race and culture, or at worst is aggressively disparaging. Would reading The White Guy Dies first allow me to experience those conflicted feelings LaValle must have felt while reading Lovecraft? No, it did not. Maybe a taste, but the horror genre is still too entrenched in whiteness to truly know what it’s like for people of color to see themselves in movie after movie, page after page, story after story, slaughtered and discarded as the disposable side character to bolster the heroics of the white protagonist.
The title, purposefully shocking in its directness, is sure to draw the ire of white folk who see themselves as marginalized every time a piece of media is not explicitly created for them. We already have evidence of the kind of reaction we can come to expect by looking no further than the social media threads that popped up after Jordan Peele said that he didn’t see himself casting a white dude as the lead in his movie. Well, between Peele’s movies and his own horror anthology featuring black authors writing black characters, Out There Screaming, clearly there is just no more room in the genre for white people. Please read that last line dripping with sarcasm.
However, Benton-Walker keeps one step ahead of reactionaries on X with his introduction to the following thirteen stories in this anthology. Written as a blog called Ghoulfriends by a character known as William (or Blog Master Will in the comments), we are told about a missing persons case involving a man named Jakobi Warren. Investigation into Jakobi’s disappearance led to the discovery of thirteen movie posters in his studio for thirteen movies that were never released. These movie reels were also found in the studio with a sign on the box that held them reading: The White Guy Dies First. This blog post is followed by a comments section in which readers reveal that there is also a collection of thirteen stories with the same basic premise, the white guy dies first in each of them, which of course is the book the reader now holds in their hands. An anonymous commenter complains that if a white guy came up with a movie called The Black Guy Dies First, people would be mad. Blog Master Will retorts that white guys already did that, effectively shutting down the fictional argument in the story, as well as the very real argument that will undoubtedly appear in the Goodreads reviews of this book.
As for the stories themselves, they stay true to the promise as each time a white character is introduced they are soon stabbed, mangled, ripped apart, eaten alive, or otherwise ushered into an early grave. What is less consistent is the quality of the stories. Though some of the tales are smartly written serving up plates of monstrous horror alongside sharp wit and clever twists to common tropes, just as many also flounder presenting the reader HBO levels of violence with the writing sensibilities of a low-budget CW teen drama.
At its best, The White Guy Dies First gives us Kendare Blake’s “The Golden Dragon,” a story about a Korean teenager who falls in with a popular group of white kids, despite her older sister’s warnings that they may not be the friends she thinks they are. The story deals with the heavy topic of sexual assault and revenge. It also provides sly commentary of the blending and homogenization of all Asian cultures by white people, leading to my favorite line in the entire book as the main character, Sophie, screams at the idiot white kids for coming to her for help with their vengeful ghost problem, “And why would you do that? This is a Japanese revenge ghost, and I’m Korean, you shits! And I was born in Boulder!”
Several stories later we are treated to the one tale in the collection that made my skin crawl, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” by Tiffany D. Jackson and epistolary work in the form of a troubled girl’s diary. The girl, Leesa Nelson writes lovingly about her family and rose garden she and her grandmother keep in their backyard. Further entries reveal a host of anti-social behaviors including, issues with understanding boundaries, obsessive thoughts, and detachment from reality. Every line increases tension as Jackson explores the inner workings of this disturbed character’s mind, and as a reader that journey was as compelling as it was anxiety-inducing.
Other standouts include “Best Served Cold,” the cannibal story from H. E. Edgmon with a dash of Native American folklore for flavor and wonderfully supportive LGBTQ representation. Then there’s “Docile Girls,” Chloe Gong’s somewhat implausible, but still very entertaining slasher. Finally, the collection ends on a strong note with Terry J. Benton-Walkers own take on a haunted house. In this case, one that is sentient and able to spin a terrifying tale on the people who have inhabited it.
The rest of the collection rates from fine to forgettable to unfortunate. Don’t be too put off by the opening killer clown story “All Eyes on Me” by Faridah Abike-Iyimide, a confounding thirty-five page narrative about a young woman who meets another young woman who works as a circus clown and falls in love so hard that the only logical next step is to murder her racist boyfriend so that they can be together. I understand that there is a coming-out metaphor at work here, but that alone is not enough to save this opener from its baffling pacing and stilted writing.
Further down the list readers may want to skip over“Break Through Our Skin” by Naseem Jamnia which takes what would be a fantastic plot with some slick commentary on gender diversity and non-binary people, but sadly squanders it with a pretentious main character, rambling paragraphs of outlandish body horror, and an ending so unbelievable that whole thing ends up feeling like a parody of the statement the author is trying to make.
Not necessarily a detractor for me, but some readers may be disappointed with the anthology altogether due to the fact that for the most part, the white characters that die are not just fodder for the terrible dark things that menace each story, but frequently are themselves terrible. They are more villain and victim. This causes many of the stories to read more as cathartic revenge fantasies rather than meaningful social commentary. With that in mind should you choose to pick this volume up, go in with the frame of mind that you are here for one simple reason, and that is to watch the white people die. This shouldn’t be surprising. It’s in the title.
The Barberry Writers 