The Ballad of Black Tom

In his fantasy/horror novella, The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), Victor LaValle reworks H.P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Horror at Red Hook,” to explore horror tropes from the perspective of an African American protagonist living in a racist world. The novella won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the World Fantasy Award, among others. LaValle is an award-winning author of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and comic books known for problematizing the racial assumptions inherent in these genres, which have historically centered whiteness.

Set in Harlem in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance, the novella follows 20-year-old Charles Thomas “Tommy” Tester, a street hustler who lives in an apartment with his ailing father. The story’s narration is in the close third person, with Part 1 from Tommy’s perspective and Part 2 from the perspective of Detective Malone.

Part 1 opens as Tommy delivers a mysterious yellow book to a woman in Queens named Ma Att. A month later, two police officers, Detective Malone and the private investigator Mr. Howard, question Tommy about a wealthy white man named Robert Suydam, who has offered Tommy an unusually large sum of money to play his guitar at an upcoming party.