A Huge Anthology, Inside and Outside! Reviewing Peele and Adams' "Out There Screaming"

A couple of months ago Caro had offered me a copy of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, to review for the Otherland Newsletter. Even though I was really anxious to read it and I knew I would eventually get my hands on it, I declined nevertheless, because it's 400 pages long and I didn't see myself finishing and reviewing it any time soon. It was then a surprise to find an audiobook edition at my local library, not only because it was available so quickly after the publication of the print book, but also because it is very seldom to find audiobooks of anthologies or short story collections in general. I put a hold on the audiobook edition and eventually had the chance to listen to it, which I'm SO glad to have done! In the printed text, each story is already of a very high quality level - I wouldn't expect it any other way with two gigantic names like Peele and Adams printed on the cover. I love a good audiobook production and here the audiobook ups the already high text quality with amazing narration and a different professional narrator for each story. It added so much to my experience to listen to the audio version and I'm very much enchanted.

The stories either explicitly or implicitly tell us about the Black experience, whether through supernatural/speculative elements or outright realism. My absolute highlights were:

Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin which deals with police officers taking too many liberties as is,

The Other One by Violet Allen in which the feelings of a woman take a rather unusual shape,

The Rider by Tananarive Due, where two young activists have the bus ride of their lives,

The Aesthete by Justin C. Key presents us a futuristic vision of sentient love bots and their health conditions,

Pressure by Ezra Claytan Daniels is about a holiday reunion of a very uncomfortable/awkward family with one black member,

A Grief of the Dead by Rion Amilcar Scott, which is the tragic story of twin brothers one of which dies and the other makes plans to reunite with him – oh and they live in a zombie universe too!

Hide and Seek by P. Djeli Clark follows the children of a drug addict who have magic on their side and finally

Origin Story by Tochi Onyebuchi which is a kind of stage play about a group of white school boys discussing their privilege.

As you see, these are only my favorites and look at how many they are! Whether you're looking for stories that are moving, enraging, amazing, saddening or astounding – it's all here, and a great work for discovering new authors too. Out There Screaming is a truly great anthology and highly recommended from my part.