AfroGoths
As Darkly makes clear, the legacy of racial oppression in America is something which Taylor has encountered – and continues to encounter – on a daily basis. But the inclusion of Taylor’s “I” here lends more than, say, credibility to her case (that case is already so tight, it would stand irrespective of who made it); it also ensures that Darkly, like the 43rd Capricho, is a self-portrait. By discussing how it feels for her to watch, say, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead – with its appropriations of Haitian folklore, and with the indiscriminate slaughter of the Black protagonist in its final scenes – Taylor forces us to participate in her experience. Darkly, then, to paraphrase something that Beckett once said of Joyce, is not just about the uncanny, it is uncanny.
Oscar Mardell reviews Leila Taylor‘s Darkly and Steve Bergsman‘s I Put a Spell on You.