Why Horror? Why Now?

Scared by the Bible was written during 2023 and the first part of 2024, certainly a tumultuous time in America and the world. But as the clock turned to 2025, with fascism on the rise around the globe and every day bringing new stories of violence - both structural and personal - against marginalized communities, I’ve been second-guessing whether this is a book we need right now.

I’ve come around to thinking it’s at least part of the puzzle, and important contribution to what’s happening in our - though it’s certainly not the only piece.

Much of our society runs on the engine of horror. When the Trump administration describes the men they’ve shipped off to a gulag in El Salvador, their intent is to dehumanize them, and to make the rest of us afraid. When people are made to feel afraid, they’ll be much more likely to give support to anyone who promises to keep them safe.

One way to fight against this is to understand the deeper structures of horror, to see how the narratives and rhetoric work. So when Trump and Stephen Miller use the language of “invasion,” we know what tropes are being deployed. And when our country asks us to fixate on tattoos, we see the history of different bodies being marked as Other in ways that transform them into dangerous monsters.

That doesn’t mean that being smarter about how we receive dangerous rhetoric is the only thing we need to be doing. This is certainly an age for mobilization, protest, and active support of the communities under direct attack. But my hope is that learning about horror can help us all think about the world around us with a little more clarity, a little more precision, and a little more depth. Recognizing the kind of stories we’re being told is the first step towards a clearer understanding of them.