Who says all the fantasies with sword- wielding heroes and heroines have to be in Middle-earth, Westeros, or even our dreams of Africa past—what the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen reminisced as “copper sun or scarlet sea”?…Fantasy stories often feature characters in medieval settings taking on monsters. I figured a young Black woman in 1920s Georgia could be that character too. Even gave her her own sword. The monsters she has to fight are plucked right out of our own history—perhaps made more terrifying because of their realness. – From the Prologue
Ring Shout has been on my radar for a long time because I really enjoyed P Djeli Clark’s other novellas, and the cover is so striking. Set in Macon, GA, in 1922, this is about Maryse, a young Black girl, who uses her magic sword to fight hateful monsters–that is, monsters literally created from hate–as embodied in the Ku Kluxes. In this story, there are just ordinary racists, the Klan, and they are hateful but also a bit boring and mundane, as far as monsters go. Then there are the Ku Kluxes, which are literal actual monsters that must be fought on a whole other level – with a magic sword, for instance. With enough time and hatred, a Klan can turn into a Ku Klux. And everyone agrees that the power of the Ku Klux has been growing lately, but no one can quite figure out why.
Maryse is joined by her fellow lady fighters Chef and Sadie; Nana Jean, a Gullah woman with a mystical connections; and a variety of other women with “the sight” like Molly, who dissects Ku Klux corpses in order to better understand what the heck is going on with that. There is also a crew of neighbors and elders who gather for the titular Ring Shouts – all gather in a circle and sing ancestral songs to harness spiritual power. (I saw a lot of similarities with the singing theme(s?) in the recent movie Sinners, and I loved that!)
There are a lot of real gross monsters with teeth where there absolutely should not be teeth. There’s a hunky love interest who gets a few paragraphs but honestly doesn’t do much besides look pretty because we got monsters to fight. Maryse takes a weird supernatural journey through a mystical tree in order to figure out her path; she enlists the help of spirit “Grandmas” who are not exactly human at all; she figures out where that sword came from and how to use it, eventually. There are skirmishes and battles, and injuries and deep pain, and there’s also hope and redemption. It’s a real hero’s journey — but, you’ll note, it’s all girls in this story. It’s excellent.