pickEverything I wanted it to be.
The focus is on Black cinematic horror, but to address the subject well, it also dips into Black cinematic history beyond horror, and the Black experience in America, historical and present day. There is some coverage of international releases, but the book is primarily talking about US films and the minutiae reflecting the particular racism of each decade as it affects the output of Black horror cinema, 1/?
WTF?! 😆 Yeah, I'm going to spend half this book outraged and the other half in hysterics of one kind or another.
pickI love horror movies, I always have. I‘ll choose the horror genre over others every time. This book was a new perspective, a Black lens I needed to look through. This book goes deeper than what we all know: the Black character dies first, or is sacrificed in other ways—not necessarily a physical death. Cinema still has a long way to go, and we must continue to demand it do better. This looks like inclusion, representation, ending racist⬇️
Trying to get back into my old reading quirk of always having a non-fiction book that is related to my current fiction read on the go 🤓
Libraries are the best. I borrowed this audiobook on Libby, and by chapter 2, I was hitting BUY NOW on a paperback copy.
The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar | 
I'm glad for the structure the book provides, outlining the multiple ways the egregious past has limited representation and creativity and the hopeful outlook for the future, while in no way letting present day America off the hook for all the ways it still needs to improve on screen and in real life for Back Americans. 11h
1) How funny the text is as a whole. Yes, it deals with serious topics throughout, but the authors' experienced media critic angle adds a superlative quality to the writing - I don't think we went more than five pages before someone else was getting roasted for poor creative output or racist thinking. The few word puns that made their way into the text were choice. 11h
The many lists and trivia inserts with their own formatting and occasional graphics reminded me of a magazine you'd get at the theatre, all the information goes further to emphasizing the point the authors want to make 11h
Less a critique and more a heads up for anyone who plans to read it linearly rather than dip into particular chapters - you're going to encounter duplicate information about films. I believe this was done so that anybody picking the book up anywhere, whether they'd seen a certain film or not, 11h
⚠️Mention of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia 11h