Spooky Reads 2025 has official commenced for me and the first book is laid to rest. I decided to begin this year’s binge of the macabre with Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora edited by Kristy Park Kulski. Anthologies and folk horror being some of my favorite stuff to read, I figured this would be a good start to get the grinder motor running, and it certainly was.
My girlfriend used to write and help manage a comic book site that has retired, and I would occasionally write some guest posts there. They had “5 Thoughts” format in place of reviews and recaps that I really liked and want to borrow/steal/use here. So here are five thoughts I have on this book:
Where
Folk horror is not a new subgenre of horror. It has likely been around since humans first told stories to each other to explain what exist in the darkness beyond the reach of their campfires. It has been having a resurrection, though, with films, books, and stories and there has consequentially been a lot of attention to it. A major element of folk horror is its connection to a place. When you have a diaspora, in this case the Asian one, what happens when that connection to the place, to the soil, is broken. Several stories in this collection examine that idea by looking what happens to a person loses the tie to their roots or what happens when a person returns to a place they, or their family, was connected to. What happens when that person learns something new about themselves or their families? Sometimes the place is where the characters need to go to stop whatever is happening, sometimes the place is what causes them to happen.
Who
In Eurocentric horror stories we see a lot of victims who are mostly innocent. Sure, maybe they had premarital sex or were having a kegger on cursed land, but even in these cases they are not directly responsible to whatever happened to create the horror. Additionally the horror is usually some Other – monster, serial killer, alien, etc. In the stories of this collection, I found that the horror was the same as the victims. I would not really say that they were stories of justice or vengeance, though these elements do come up, but rather there ran a thread of vindication through many of these stories. The characters would face some horrible thing, usually at the hands of other people, and they would become the monster in response to that horrible thing. So the reader often finds themselves on the side of the horror, even as it acts upon its horrible nature. In some cases, the horror is even welcomed as a solution to the situation.
What
I very much enjoyed the range offered in this book. Stories ranged from Armenia on the western edge of Asia to the islands of Indonesia and even further to New Zealand. With that range of places came a huge range of cultures and all the various things hiding in their dark places. I got the opportunity to read about some myths and folklore that I knew a little about, particularly in Japan, and even more chances to read about new myths, folklore, and history. For example, in Lee Murray’s heartbreaking, “The Poppy Cloud” I learned about the treatment of Chinese immigrants to New Zealand which easily rivaled what immigrants faced in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries.
When
The Asian diaspora is not a singular monolithic event in history. It has a long presence throughout almost all of human history (even prehistory if you hold to the Bering land bridge theory, though modern evidence has really challenged this). It is the result of human migration, colonialism, war, and more recently climate change. This book takes the reader forward and back through time, often in the same story, exploring why people left and why they returned and what they found or what found them. Sometimes there is closure to some past event, other times there is an awakening or awareness of something that has been hidden. There are often lessons to be learned in these tales, if not by the characters, than by the readers.
Why
This thought may be more about myself than about the book. Why this book to start Spooky Reads 2025? When I started Spooky Reads, my goal was simply to try and read more horror to expand my reading beyond my heavy diet of fantasy and science fiction. As it developed, it also has become an opportunity to stretch myself into reading beyond what I would gravitate to naturally. I mentioned earlier that I really love anthologies because they give me the opportunity to read a wide variety of stories in a single package. This book gave me the chance to explore not only cultures that I have read before, but also ones that I have not and probably would not have sought out on my own.
Final Thoughts
- Some of my favorite stories from this collection are:
- “Mother’s Mother’s Daughter” by Audrey Zhou
- “An Unholy Terroir” by Ayida Shonibar
- “Fed by Earth, Slaked by Salt”by Jess Cho
- “Neither Feathers Nor Fin” by Angela Yuriko Smith
- “Things to Know Before You Go” by Nadia Bulkin
- “In the Heart of the Forest, A Tree” by Gabriela Lee
- “Under Blades We Lie Still” by Christopher Hann
- “The Poppy Cloud” by Lee Murray
- While this was a great first book to read for Spooky Reads 2025, it certainly was a challenge to write about, especially as I’m still working on getting back into the groove of doing this. So I apologize for the rough edges and wandering thoughts. I have another anthology on deck (this time of indigenous tales), so I’ll get more practice.
- Next up – The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
That’s all for now. Happy reading and remember to welcome the spooks in your life.