Ring Shout

“You see, the Second Klan was birthed on November 25 back in 1915. What we call D-Day, or Devil’s Night—when William Joseph Simmons, a regular old witch, and fifteen others met up on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta. Stories say they read from a conjuring book inked in blood on human skin. Can’t vouch for that. But it was them that called up the monsters we call Ku Kluxes. And it all started with this damned movie.”

This quote is one of the major premises of this novel, the moment when Clark defines his “what if.” Shifting just one or a few elements of reality outside of the world of the novella is what makes the novella a work of speculative fiction. Historically, Stone Mountain was the site of an important meeting that fueled the resurgence of the Klan, but there was certainly no magic involved.

“The Shout come from slavery times. Though hear Uncle Will tell it, maybe it older than that. Slaves would Shout when they get some rest on Sundays. Or go off to the woods in secret. They’d come together and carry on like this: the Leader, the Stick Man, and the Basers, singing, clapping, and stamping, while the Shouters move to the song. In the Shout, you got to move the way the spirit tell you and can’t stop until it let you go. And don’t call it no dance! Not unless you want Uncle Will to set you down and learn you proper. See, the Shout ain’t really the song, it’s the movement. He say the Shouts like this one got the most power: about surviving slavery times, praying for freedom, and calling on God to end that wickedness.”

The Shout is an important part of Gullah culture and, more broadly, of the world that enslaved people made. This practice is one that helped enslaved people gain enough resilience to survive the harrowing experiences of slavery. Like many cultural practices in the novella, this one serves as a source of healing and resistance.

“Molly says it’s like an infection, or a parasite. And it feed on hate. She says chemicals in the body change up when you hate strong. When the infection meets that hate, it starts growing until it’s powerful enough to turn the person Ku Klux. Ask me, it’s plain evil them Klans let in, eating them up until they hollow inside. Leave behind bone-white demons who don’t remember they was men.”

Science fiction is another genre from which Clark draws in this speculative novella. In this quote, Clark uses the language of science to describe the mechanism by which Ku Kluxes evolve, making this passage a major moment during which Clark speculates about what would happen if hate were a literal infection.

“To tell you they watching. They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.”

Maryse is engaged in conversation with her dream self in this vision, meaning that she is talking to herself. Dream states and visions are an important part of the magical system of the novel, so this passage underscores the novella as speculative fiction. In addition, this passage highlights the cost of not addressing trauma—one is more vulnerable to further damage and manipulation by ill-intentioned people like Butcher Clyde.

“That’s the sword’s power—a thing of vengeance and repentance.”

Maryse knows the origins of the sword. A former king-turned-enslaved-man constructed and imbued it with the souls of people from the African continent who were complicit in the transatlantic slave trade or enslaved people who became vengeful because of enslavement. The sword is a symbol of connection to the past and the history of enslavement. Knowing the origins of the sword, Maryse should be cautious about using it because of its potential harm to her. She has a blind spot about the sword that comes back to haunt her.

“‘There were two brothers, Truth and Lie. One day they get to playing, throwing cutlasses up into the air. Them cutlasses come down and fast as can be—swish!—chop each of their faces clean off! Truth bend down, searching for his face. But with no eyes, he can’t see. Lie, he sneaky. He snatch up Truth’s face and run off! Zip! Now Lie go around wearing Truth’s face, fooling everybody he meet.’ She stops stitching to fix me with stern eyes. ‘The enemy, they are the Lie. Plain and simple. The Lie running around pretending to be Truth.’”

This is a tale that appears in multiple cultures, including Black culture. The aunties use the story to warn Maryse about the possibility of deception and self-deception leading her astray in her quest to defeat Butcher Clyde. Using folklore as a source of wisdom that can guide behavior is one of the important ways that characters in the novella use cultural heritage as a tool of resistance.

“Oh, we might point them in a direction we need, but that hate they got in them is their own doing. You see, Maryse, we don’t care about what skin you got or religion. Far as we concerned, you all just meat.”

Butcher Clyde’s cynical take on the Ku Kluxes and the Klan highlights one of the truths of white supremacy, which is that it makes its believers weak, rather than strong. Butcher Clyde is much like powerful people who use such views to manipulate others for their own ends.

“My grandpappy say when we die, we get our wings back, the ones white folk cut off when we come here. Maybe I’ll fly and meet my mama. Or all the way back to Africa.”

This quote occurs during Sadie’s death scene. She relies on folklore to help her deal with her impending death, which she imagines as a possible victory and freedom instead of defeat. The folktale of “The Flying African” is thus a source of strength and resilience even in the face of death.

“But we needed you to become who you are now. Needed to fill you up with horror. Anger. Why we left you that little present in the barn.”

Butcher Clyde taunts Maryse about the horrific scene of her family’s bodies hanging in the barn after the Ku Kluxes and Butcher Clyde lynched them during events that occurred before the action of the novel. This is Maryse’s central trauma. Butcher Clyde is so confident that Maryse’s inability to deal with her trauma weakens her that he explicitly tells her that he is manipulating her. This is one of many instances in which Maryse’s unaddressed trauma makes her vulnerable to her antagonist.

“I walk in de moonlight,

I walk in de starlight,

To lay dis body down.

I’ll walk in de graveyard,

I’ll walk through the graveyard,

To lay dis body down.”

“Lay Dis Body Down”/ “Lay This Body Down” is a traditional Black spiritual, making it an important part of Black cultural heritage. Characters in the book put Black cultural heritage to many uses. In this instance, the song allows the Shouters to express the community’s deep grief over the death of Sadie.

“The weapon is a thing of vengeance. The wielder must pour their own anger and suffering into it. We thought it could take away your pain. But we have only fed that wound, made you into a killer.”

Butcher Clyde isn’t the only character who can manipulate Maryse because she hasn’t dealt with her trauma. To a certain extent, the aunties have as well. Here, they acknowledge the negative impact the sword has had on Maryse’s character. This unintended consequence of using the sword shows how often vengeance can turn on the person doling out vengeance. The aunties name Maryse for what she is: a killer. This is an important moment of revelation for Maryse about her identity.

“‘Mine yo self,’ she warns low. ‘Dat ebil place ain like yuh. Hunnuh don’ tek cyare hunnuh git turn’ bout een dey hall. Wensoneba people dem da gwine dey, dey da gii up sump’n. Leabe sump’n b’hin. Sway hunnuh gwine come back yuh whole?’”

In Standard American English, this quote from Nana Jean says, “Mind yourself. That evil place isn’t like here. If you don’t take care, you will get turned about in their hall. Whenever people go there, they have to give up something. Leave something behind. How can you know/plan to come back here whole?” This is Gullah, the language Clark chooses to use without translation when Nana Jean uses it. The presence of untranslated Gullah shows the centrality of Gullah to the cultural context of the novella and that Clark expects his audience to understand that world.

“‘You’ve been in here a long time.’ The girl nods. ‘It’s where she keeps me.’ ‘I don’t keep you nowhere!’ I snap, anger bubbling up. She looks at me, and the fear in her round eyes sets me back.”

This scene captures how Maryse’s unresolved trauma affects her psychologically. Like the small girl who is another version of her, Maryse is stuck in her trauma and thus unable to move forward with her life. Not addressing her trauma makes her vulnerable to others and circumstances in the novel.

“First one I killed, I poured much of the rage I held into its death. Hacked it to pieces. But wasn’t enough. I had more pain and anger to give. Two years I spent wandering, killing Ku Kluxes. Don’t know if I was even fully human no more. Was just the vengeance and killing. Now I hunted the monsters. I was somewhere in the Tennessee woods, descending into a hell of blood and slaughter, when Nana Jean’s call dug me out that pit. Became a person again. But I buried the wound that fueled me deep, stuffing a little girl back into that hatch, and all the horrors she’d seen.”

Maryse describes the killing spree she went on in the years after the killing of her family. Being consumed by hatred and vengeance dehumanized her to the extent that she still has not fully recovered from the intensity of that period in her life. Without a greater purpose and membership in a community like that at Nana Jean’s farm, she lacked resilience. The damage that she suffered because she was alone shows the importance of having community as a source of resilience.

“‘Time to balance the world on the tip of a sword.’ Chef looks at me hard, then says. ‘All right, then. But I’m coming with you.’ I start to protest but she cuts me off. ‘Sadie wouldn’t let you go out there by yourself, and I won’t neither. Make peace with it, because we going over that trench together!’”

Maryse knows that her killing spree damaged her in the time before she came to Nana Jean’s farm. Despite that knowledge, she still has not fully accepted that being a member of the community is even more powerful than wielding the sword. This blind spot is an important character flaw that defines her throughout the novel. In the end, having Chef by her side makes her a more formidable opponent.

“‘You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like…watered-down whiskey. Now your people!’ His eyes light up, and he steps closer. ‘Y’all got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous—so strong!’”

Butcher Clyde describes one way that formerly enslaved Black Americans and their descendants could respond to the horrors of slavery. He is self-interested in holding out vengeance as the way to address this injustice. The fact that it is Butcher Clyde spelling out this rationale for going over to the side of the Grand Cyclops shows that Clark discredits vengeance as an appropriate response. The fact that Butcher Clyde sees no difference between the hate of the descendants of the enslavers and the enslaved shows his understanding that hate is a force that has the potential to destroy anyone who is overcome by it. Hatred and vengeance, in other words, are not fruitful paths to resistance.

“The Grand Cyclops don’t look like nothing I ever seen. It reminds me of a long, coiling snake. But it got arms too, thick trunks that split into curling and writhing tentacles. The whole of her is made of people, their flesh now bound to her service, her vessel into this world. All along that awful body mouths open to let out a shriek of birth and triumph that shakes me to my bones.”

The monstrous body of the Grand Cyclops marks this part of the novella as science fiction and horror, important contributing genres to speculative fiction. That people who engage in anti-Black violence and hold white supremacist beliefs make up her body helps Clark develop the idea that white supremacy and anti-Black violence make the perpetrators monsters.

“Be careful now, Bruh Rabbit. My brother’s voice comes so strong, it feels like he’s right in my ear. We the trickster—the spider, the rabbit, even the fox. We fool those stronger than us. That’s how we survive. Watch out you don’t get tricked yo’self!”

Black folktales about deceptive figures are important means by which Black Americans transmit values around the uses of power and the importance of justice. In a moment when Maryse is tempted to go over to the other side, she can resist because of her knowledge of these figures. This is also a moment when her reliance on others—her ghostly brother in this instance—gives her the ability to overcome her challenges as a character. The message is that no one who is faced with the harrowing history of enslavement and its echoes can survive without community.

“I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice. But not hate.”

Because she reads her cultural heritage perceptively, Maryse can resist Butcher Clyde’s offer to go over to his side. Her heritage presents her with an alternative to the response to oppression that Butcher Clyde supports out of self-interest.

“[T]here’s no frightened girl threatening to pull me under. And with that fear conquered, seems like I opened a floodgate. The spirits that come now not just a few, not even hundreds. More like thousands […] I’m swept up by that maelstrom and I’m singing too, spilling out my own pain.”

In this passage, Maryse finally receives the benefit of having confronted her trauma in the form of the small girl, who represents her previous inability to move on from the past. Maryse gains this strength not through ignoring her pain but by acknowledging it. This moment is a pivotal one in her character arc.

“When President Lincoln send out the emancipation, the stingy masters them didn’t want the slaves to learn about it. But slaves had they own ways of knowing. One named John, he raised up in the kitchen, and stole away how to read watching missus teach her young’uns. He come with a letter on the emancipation, and everybody in the cabins gather ’round as he read. That’s why we call this Shout Read ’em, John, Read ’em for the day he come to tell the people about they freedom!—Interview with Uncle Will, age sixty-seven, transliterated from the Gullah by EK”

Notations that represent oral narratives by formerly enslaved people appear throughout the book. They serve as previews of events and themes. In this instance, the narrative signals how powerful Maryse is once she embraces different ways of knowing—namely, her interactions with the supernatural world inhabited by her brother and other victims of anti-Black violence. Like John, Maryse turns these other ways of knowing to her advantage, despite all efforts of her antagonists to prevent her from using that knowledge to embrace her power.

“I got songs too! I listen to my sword, letting those chanting voices fill me up. For a moment it seems the two are battling: my songs and his uneven chorus. But it was never a real fight. What I have is beautiful music inspired by struggle and fierce love. What he got ain’t nothing but hateful noise. Not a hint of soul to it. Like unseasoned meat. My songs crash right through that nonsense, silencing it, just as my sword takes off his arm. He falls back and I dip low, slicing away everything under one knee.”

This is a moment of triumph for Maryse. It comes about because she embraces her heritage, which is one founded on love instead of hate. The message here is that survival can’t just be about hating the oppressors. It comes through creative acts such as the Shouts and music that further connect individuals to their community and cultural heritage.

“‘I’m never far. Ain’t you heard me talking, Bruh Rabbit?’ My eyes go wide and he winks. ‘You so wrapped up in your grief, no other way you would listen, except through them stories. Time to lay your burdens down. Live your life.’”

In this quote, Martin reveals himself as the source of the voice in Maryse’s head that encourages her to heed the lessons of Black folktales. Martin’s point is that if she will let them, these tales can be a source of strength and healing. This is also a moment when the community, including the community of ancestors, becomes a source of strength in the face of adversity. With the blessing of Martin’s ghost, Maryse receives all she needs to move past her trauma and live a full life.