The Ballad of Black Tom

The Ballad of Black Tom rocked my world.

I was already writing stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft but I wasn’t sure I had a place in the genre. Then Victor LaValle took one of Lovecraft’s most racist works, The Horror At Red Hook, and produced an alternate version.

Black Tom touches on the events of Lovecraft’s original story but tells the tale from the point of view of a black musician named Tommy Tester. LaValle’s reimagining of Lovecraft is a revelation.

He showed me that I didn’t have to be like Lovecraft to write in his world. And LaValle… show more.

Readers of H.P. Lovecraft, and writers (like me) who have mined the Lovecraftian Mythos for decades, have struggled in recent years to square the inspiration they have derived from the work and the intensely problematic nature of the man’s white supremacy and xenophobia. Several recent books have addressed this ethical conflict head-on, and none so brilliantly and effectively as LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, which reconstitutes Lovecraft’s “The Horror of Red Hook” from an African American POV. LaValle’s sharpness of prose, keen eye, and feel for environment grounds his tale of a street hustler in 1920s Harlem confronting… show more.

What’s truly evil? Who’s the real monster here? Victor LaValle’s repurposing of H.P. Lovecraft in 1920’s Harlem does many things brilliantly, but for me most importantly it proved that, after a lifetime of reading, studying, teaching, and writing fiction, I can still read a new book and wind up asking, “How did he do that?” 

Set in 1920’s New York, a con man and mediocre guitarist strums his way through a city beleaguered by racism, the occult, and the impending arrival of a powerful being from another dimension. One of the many great things about this book is that it brings African-Americans, historically invisible in speculative fiction, to the forefront. The book has a bone to pick with the racism of the Lovecraft oeuvre and his story, “The Horror at Red Hook.” LaValle is a master storyteller, and you find yourself engaged in a tale that is funny, poignant, and chilling. Yes, Black Tom is… show more.

Older cosmic horror often contained misogyny, classism, ableism, and flat-out racism. The Ballad of Black Tom turns a spotlight right back onto that legacy, taking H.P. Lovecraft's story 'The Horror at Red Hook' and telling the story from the point of view of a Black man who resists getting pulled into a scheme involving evil magic and ancient gods. It does not flinch from the racism either of the story, or of the period in general, and in so doing, exposes the narrative flaws and the xenophobia of the source material. I found it a sharp, fresh presentation of a… show more.