From the Hoard: This Summer I Read…

This is the first of many resource dumps I’ll be sharing. Consider it my “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” assignment in the form of things read and watched because I didn’t have a summer vacation. Instead, I worked and studied my way through the heat and disability/chronic pain flares. While these were my summer reads, they’re pretty apt for spooky season.

Read on for monster theory, queer literature, low theory, the Chicanx imaginary, Black women in horror, Black vampires, horror films, among others…

Read/Listen:

Aoki, Ryka. Light from Uncommon Stars. Tor Books, 2022. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• A gorgeous story weaving hell, demons, spaceships, being a trans woman, sapphic love (I feel Aoki’s descriptions of attraction in my bones), de-stigmatizing sex work, violins, and doughnuts. So many doughnuts.
• I’m particularly interested in the combination of chthonic and sci-fi world-/universe-building.

Brooks, Kinitra D. Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror. Rutgers University Press, 2018. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• I’m fascinated by murderous and monstrous women, especially women on the margins. So learning about Dr. Brooks’ work at the 2026 SFRA, meeting her over the bathroom sinks, and finding a copy of this book in the conference break room got me excited.
• Dr. Brooks uses the term “fluid fiction” to describe how Black women write horror that intentionally bends and melds genres.

Butler, Octavia E. Fledgling. 1st Warner Books ed., Warner Books, 2007. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• A comfort reread. One of my favorite vampire conceptualizations: symbiotic creatures who imbue their “victims” with health, victims who live in communities together. Our main character, Shori, is one of the first Black vampires. Her loss of memory after a tragic event and her sexual relationships with her adult symbionts (she looks like a tween despite being 53 years old) cast a queasy, uneasy hue.
• This is the last of Butler’s books published in her lifetime.

Calvo-Quirós, William A. “The Emancipatory Power of the Imaginary.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, vol. 41, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 155–170. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2016.41.1.155. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• Learned about this in the SFRA 2026 panel “Expanding Speculative Genres Through Latinx Futurisms.” Calvo-Quirós writes about how Chicanx (or Chican@) speculative works are not escapism but a form of envisioning possible futures while living under oppression. This is why I love speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy…
• Monsters! “In many ways, you need to turn yourself into a monster, willing to deconstruct and dismantle history, trying to be free from the constraints of history in order to study the monsters of history and the history of monsters.” (p. 155)

Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011. A John Hope Franklin Center Book. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• What started as a personal curiosity read turned into a core text read. I’ll be weaving this work into so many future projects. From failure as rebellion to the “low theory” that informs everything I do.
• “…low theory as a mode of accessibility, but we might also think about it as a kind of theoretical model that flies below the radar, that is assembled from eccentric texts and examples and that refuses to confirm the hierarchies of knowing that maintain the high in high theory.” (p. 16)

Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. “The University and the Undercommons.” Minor Compositions, 2013, pp. 25-43. (WorldCat)

• Finally read after being on my radar for years thanks to Halberstam referencing it in The Queer Art of Failure. While I’m working not to be part of the university institution at all, work with open education and futures feels like a doorway into the undercommons. I suppose I’m undercommons-affiliated, because in many ways my goal as a scholar is to steal from the university to give to the public instead of traditional “teaching.” Makes me think of what Abigail Thorn has done with Philosophy Tube.

Klune, T. J. The House in the Cerulean Sea. Tor, 2021. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

— Somewhere Beyond the Sea. Tor, 2024 (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• Started listening to these as audiobooks when I was ill. I wish I could have read these books as a queer kid. The quirky and joyful magical youth (often monstrified for their difference). The tender, wholesome queer love. The indomitable spirit. I can’t wait for a re-read. Take me to Marsyas Island.

Kaishian, Patricia Ononiwu. Forest Euphoria : The Abounding Queerness of Nature. 1st ed., Spiegel & Grau, 2025. (WorldCat / Bookshop)

• Will be referencing this for scientific examples of nature not bending to the usual binary, time-bound norms we hold ourselves to. Kaishian’s personal stories weave together mycology, scientific documentation of queerness in nature, and crows. Crows are the best.

Ward, Alie, host. “Teratology (MONSTERS) with Dr. W. Scott Poole.” Ologies, episode 352, 26 Oct. 2023, https://www.alieward.com/ologies/teratology.

• Listened to this with a friend on a car trip down to my final tests for an endometriosis pain study at the University of Michigan. Scott Poole reminded me how much I love the monster theory world, where many of us—despite loving horror and monsters—are vastly different from the content we enjoy: he’s a vegan.
• Teratology can be defined as the study of monsters but is commonly known as the study of congenital birth defects. Rude.
• Listen to this for a wealth of monster and horror fun: this is why I study monsters.

Listen/Watch:

The Birdcage. Directed by Mike Nichols, USA, 1996. (WorldCat)

• Rewatched this on the last day of Pride month at a local theater. The humor (however dated) and acting are delightful. Takes me back to childhood. Albert refers to himself as a monster. Makes me think about how we use the word monster, especially as queer people.

Bit. Directed by Brad Michael Elmore. USA, 2019.

• Of course I’ll watch a movie with queer vampires. However fun the concept is, the awkward cinematography and dialogue made for an almost painful watch. But nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

Candyman. Directed by Bernard Rose. USA, 1992. (WorldCat)

• Usually I have a hard time getting lost in older horror films, noticing the obvious prosthetics and gore or awkward dialogue. But between the real bees and the ominous thread weaving through, the film pulled me along. It also felt a bit close to home as a friend’s dad grew up in Cabrini Green. But the bees! Despite it all, I still love bees.
• See Halberstam’s Skin Shows “Parasites and Perverts” for how Candyman upholds the racist trope of Black men’s violence, and for how monsters are intersections of identity beyond race and sex.

Candyman. Directed by Nia DaCosta. USA, 2021.

• Watched the original and this one close together. The pacing and logic of the film felt off even if I loved the perspective of haunting gentrification.

Night of the Living Dead. Directed by George A. Romero. USA, 1968. (WorldCat)

• Shamblers! If zombies were this slow in newer films, there wouldn’t be zombie apocalypses. Fabulous to see how zombies have evolved over the years.
• Despite our hero being a Black guy, we still have the gendered emotional immobility of our terrified heroine, racism cinches the ending. Love how the world-building is woven in via news reports.

Nope. Directed by Jordan Peele. USA, 2022. (WorldCat)

• A rewatch over a bowl of tom kha gai soup. The acting, phenomenal. The alien, also phenomenal. I appreciate how Jean Jacket’s design is inspired by underwater creatures.

Sinners. Directed by Ryan Coogler, USA, 2025. (WorldCat)

• Rewatched this on my birthday. One of my favorite recent films and portrayals of vampires. The real villains are the Klan, while the vampires are essentially culture vultures (see the vultures on buildings as harbingers of their arrival) despite their message of unity.
• Delta blues, Hoodoo/Rootwork (I see you, Annie), an impossibly gorgeous cast, and so many intentional details make for a pretty perfect film.
• A great horror flick for horror noobs/scaredy cats. Almost no jump scares and fairly palatable (pun intended) vampire-related gore—but I’m such a bad judge of it, though.

Teaches of Peaches. Directed by Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer. Germany, 2024.

• A longtime Peaches fan, I revel in her ability to play in the grotesqueness of having a body, her use of hair, genitals, and joyful body-owning in her music. This will definitely be a source for future work on how queer/women’s bodies are relegated to the realm of grotesque and gross for our hairy, fleshy, sticky, stinky, sexy bits.

The Substance. Directed by Coralie Fargeat, USA, 2024.

• My experience watching this went from “What the fuck am I watching?” to “Holy shit, this is amazing.” Is the film’s horror the body horror or the expectation that women will isolate and torture themselves to chase youth?
• As is the trouble with any film, cinematography could play into the objectifying male gaze it’s trying to critique. I read some Reddit threads that reported men laughing in the theater throughout the film: the IRL horror persists.
• Monstro Elisa-Sue! Fabulous design.

Watchmen. Created by Damon Lindelof. USA, 2019.

• How had I not watched this sooner? Easily one of my favorite shows of the year. Regina King is phenomenal. The soundtrack is immaculate. The plot weaves so much meaning together, you don’t realize everything meant something until close to the end. It’s delightfully complex, giving us characters with many layers and uncertain motives while the only true villains are white supremacists.
• Makes me think about how superheroes are dehumanizing in a similar way to monsters, with their abilities and traits pulling away from being bog-standard and acceptable human.