Author and educator Françoise DuMaurier talks to Female First about how the #ownvoices movement inspired their new young adult fiction novel, The Grateful Boys.
The Grateful Boys
The vampire genre is as old as storytelling itself. Occasionally an author or filmmaker is able to bring something truly unique or valuable to the table that sets the genre anew. Bram Stoker did it in the late 1800s when he wrote Dracula. And I’d argue the latest piece of vampire fiction that truly gave us a unique perspective wasn’t Twilight, but the 1987 Joel Schumacher film The Lost Boys. That was the vampire story that really updated our favourite creatures of the night from ancient gentlemen in adorned robes to eternal young adults that seeped themselves in youth culture. This is how we’ve viewed vampires ever since that movie dropped in the 1980s.
In 2018 I revisited a lot of the most recent vampire fiction from the past thirty years. As a black writer, something really stood out; it was the complete lack of diversity within the sub-genre. And this lack of diversity over the past thirty years goes beyond vampire fiction and spills into the genres of fantasy and supernatural. Can you think of the last book you read about vampires, werewolves or wizards that didn’t have a white protagonist? The options are thin at best. It was during this time last year that I asked myself why hadn’t a girl with dark skin or curly hair ever fallen in league with a vampire in one of these here books. Or why wouldn’t a Latino boy be just as likely to come across a supernatural event as his white counterparts would in one of these young adult novels used to pass the time?
It wasn’t long before I began reading everything I could about the #ownvoices movement. The movement is characterised by minority authors writing about minority characters across a variety of rich and ever-expanding genres, genres that we have historically been shut out of. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many terrific and acclaimed novels from black authors, but over the past century, black voices in particular have been viewed by publishers as authors who should be relegated to genres of historical slavery or overcoming adversity in an urban setting. We rarely read about people of colour as central protagonists who avert the apocalypse or who are chosen to go to wizard school. I also cannot stress the term “central protagonist” enough; it’s not enough that every genre story gets one or two supporting characters who are vaguely described as minorities. Children of every colour deserve the opportunity to read about central characters that resemble them. The #ownvoices movement in literature has given us a greater degree of central representation within five years than we’d previously seen in fifty. To tell authors of colour that they have stories worth sharing which feature their perspective in genres which have previously ignored them is empowering and long overdue.
I learned about #ownvoices and was floored by its scope and promise. After consuming a glut of vampire fiction myself, I knew this was the sub-genre in which I wanted to posit my characters. The ideas hit me like an uncontrollable flurry. #ownoices is about more than just a writer of colour making their main character in a fantasy story a different race than white. It’s about how their unique perspective can inform the story. So I set off jotting down myriad ideas. A story of traditional white vampires who preyed upon people of colour in a small town. A black Sheriff who must contend with racism and political upheaval within a town under attack by vampires. These are ideas that made it into my new novel The Grateful Boys. But I knew I wanted the central conflict to revolve around a romance that possibly shouldn’t occur.
In walks the fully formed, biracial teenage girl I named Hailey who, perhaps naively, falls for a blood-sucking creature of the night. I could already hear the Twilight comparisons. But that tagline is as far as they’d be able to go. While Edward of Twilight was an unabashed hero, a white knight of vampires, I wanted a young gothic vampire who was neither good nor evil. Rather, a creature who simply exists and is compelled by his desire for blood and nightly gaslighting. And what’s a vampire without a brood? I couldn’t just write a story about teenage vampires who nonsensically return to high school year after year for centuries. No, if these seemingly teenage fangers were to step foot in a high school, they had to have a proper reason. The idea came fully formed. These vampires would never attend school. No, they’d merely lurk the halls looking for vulnerable prey.
The setting became just as important. I work in an area that is strangely rural yet has a decent population of black people and Latin people. What better cue to steal from than real life and my own experiences of it. The rural southern gothic setting of Corpus, Georgia became just as much of a character as any in the book. A town stuck in the past and afraid to move forward where the people in charge have been there seemingly since the dawn of time. They’d elect a black Sheriff by a thin margin to lead their police force, yet place blame squarely at his feet for the recent spat of blood bank robberies. Not to mention the couple passing through town who’d been found dead in the novel’s opener. Obviously this fella isn’t doing his job. What Sheriff wouldn’t know how to handle a town under attack by these vicious bloodsuckers?
I digress. These are trying times with complicated and controversial men in power on both sides of the Atlantic, we are living at a time when the free world is starting to feel, perhaps, less free? The Grateful Boys is a veiled look at chaos in a world afraid to move forward. The result is racial unrest provoked by a girl of colour falling for a vampire. But rest assured, in classic Lost Boys fashion, her younger brother is ready with a wooden stake to eradicate any fanger trying to seduce his sister. His name’s Mason and he brings a lot to a multi-perspective story. Where his sister sees love, Mason sees a vampire using hypnosis to control his prey. Mason and his cohort of teen drifters transform a romance story into a thriller when he makes a plan to once-and-for-all rid Corpus, Georgia of its vampire infestation. As Corey Haim once uttered in the aforementioned vampire pic that set the genre anew — wait til mom finds out!
I hope I’ve provided a uniquely fascinating vampire story just as seminal for a new generation.
The Grateful Boys by Françoise DuMaurier is published by Clink Street on 1st October, RRP £10.99 paperback, £3.99 ebook.