Why We Exist: A Call For Community

On August 1, 2013, I contributed an essay to the increasingly popular site Black Girl Nerds (BGN) titled, "Graveyard Shift Sisters: In Search Of Black Women Horror Directors":

Google is perhaps the most frequently used search engine and one would imagine to find any and all combinations of what even the modest of curiosities peak. I even tried Bing and several combinations (Black, African American, women, female, horror, directors, filmmakers). Either the World Wide Web is trolling me or the state of Black women directing horror films is a lonely, desolate highway.

Just like James Spooner dispelled the question whether Black punk rockers existed, so will I seek to find and highlight these Black women horror directors who have yet to appear on my radar. Because I refuse to believe the future of genre film will not see horror films directed by Black women. Because it’s important that the tradition of ‘Black horror’ continues with female voices. Because horror itself needs these women to further enrich its evolution as a genre.

But this space is about more than the directors. More recently in celebration of the Halloween season, my Black Girl (Horror) Nerds series was birthed for the BGN audience stating:

There is no doubt that Black folks love some horror movies, but I became deeply curious about the Black women who were treading the terrain of horror filmmaking, critical writing, journalism, cosplaying, blogging, and fan convention hopping. The geeks or nerds if you will; the Black women who go beyond casually seeing the mainstream theatrical released thriller on opening night.

That is you. This space is about you and your love for horror: the cosplayers, journalists, filmmakers, novelists, collectors, convention hoppers, film fanatics, visual artists, and the brothers who got a story to tell as well. Your experience being in horror fandom spaces and the general arts industry where we seem to be but a few.

You may not consider yourself a geek or a nerd and that's great. Because this space is about you defining you as a horror fan. I need YOU to use this space as a platform to write about your experiences being a black female horror fan, share photos, what inspires you, recommend, highlight, celebrate other women of color in horror or yourself, write reviews on horror movies, anything that builds a community of Black women horror fans and beyond.

Do you feel the race and gender factor offers you a different perspective in horror fandom?

As I was writing these handful of pieces, I realized that I had to make something bigger out of my frustration.

So let's build together, and move from the margins to the center.


Image: Black african woman posing in the studio By VICTOR TORRES