🪓🔥 Hella Monsters. Hella Ancestors. Hella Juneteenth.
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
📚 Finished Reading: Ring Shout
✍🏾 Author: P Djèlí Clark
📏 Length: 172 pages
Genre: Historical Horror, Southern Gothic
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Happy Juneteenth!!! 🖤✊🏾I’m hella excited about this book review and waited until Juneteenth to post about this book. Also, I am so glad I waited to read Ring Shout until after watching Sinners not once, not twice, but THREE times (yessss you read that correctly, three times, don’t judge me 😂😂)
because listen. These two? They go together like grits and fried fish. 😍 The vibes between these two scream rage and liberation, ancestors and prophecy. Straight up 🔥🔥🔥
Unmatched Energy ✨
This read was sooooo good! I can’t believe I had this on my bookshelf for so long, waiting to be read and devoured in one reading.
Ring Shout hits that sweet spot of Southern Black horror that gets under your skin but fills you with pride and power. You’ve got Maryse, our monster slayer, with her singing blade given to her by the ancestors to defeat monsters.
You’ve got Sadie, wild and loyal, rolling up with her shotgun, Winnie, and the most ride or die energy I’ve read in a minute.
“One little Ku Klux deaaaad,” a voice hums near my ear. “Two little Kluxes deaaaad, Three little Kluxes, Four little Kluxes, Five little Kluxes deaaaad.”
You’ve got Chef, holding it down with steady big brother vibes; she lowkey gave me Smoke energy from Sinners. Calm but dangerous, steady but ready to turn up when it’s time, as the driver, or providing weapons and giving a distraction to get out of hazardous situations. 🔫😏
“Back in the war, Cordy picked up the nickname Chef. Not for cooking—at least not food. Frenchie soldiers learned her to make things for blowing up Germans and collapsing trenches.”
And then there’s Molly, Choctaw, and brilliant, bringing her scientific knowledge of the Ku Kluxes to the fight.
“Once infected, morphological transformation seems dependent on the individual.” That’s science talk for how Klan folk turn Ku Klux. 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.“
Her moments always resonated with me because our Indigenous communities always carry deep wisdom, just like in Sinners. They've a grounded connection to the earth, and they’ve always stood right alongside Black people in resistance. Molly’s power felt ancestral, too.
Every chapter had me pausing, like, "This is it." The rage, the grief, the righteous fury, the survival, the joy, the magic, the community; the weight of history is carried with brutal truth and determination. It’s Southern Black horror that refuses to be soft for anybody.
The Monsters Are Real.
“When the Klans ride in all gallant on their horses to save the day, white folk go wild—“like a people possessed,” newspapers say, which ain’t too far from the truth.”
What Ring Shout does that hits me deep is turn the Klan into literal monsters: the Ku Kluxes: ugly creatures feeding off hatred, making pacts with dark forces, thriving on America’s racist sins. Reading about these monsters was horrific,
“The thing standing in his place now can’t rightly be called a man. It’s easily nine feet tall, with legs that bend back like the hindquarters of a beast, joined to a long torso twice as wide as most men… It’s the head that stands out — long and curved to the end in a sharp bony point.
This is a Ku Klux… Every bit of the thing is a pale bone white, down to claws like carved blades of ivory. The only part not white are the eyes. Should be six in all: beads of red on black in rows of threes on either side of that curving head… And what passes for lips on a long muzzle peel back, revealing a nest of teeth like spiky icicles.”
Could you imagine seeing one in real life? But let’s be real. Even without the claws and teeth, those monsters exist. P Djèlí Clark knows how to take our history, twist it just enough, and reflect the absolute horror we’re still facing now in 2025 with police brutality, the Trump administration, and racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, sexist laws and policies that are implemented in our society.
“White folk earn something from that hate. Might not be wages. But knowing we on the bottom and they set above us—just as good, maybe better.”
That scene at Frenchy’s juke joint?? 👏🏾😍🥹👏🏾 The way music, resistance, and community come together in that space had me thinking directly about Sinners. You already know which scene I’m talking about, when Sammie sang and my body erupted in goosebumps all over.
Ryan Coogler did something similar, giving us Southern Black spaces in Sinners in the deep Mississippi South filled with Black joy, but not erasing the weight of what our people carry. Both works understand that Black joy and Black rage aren’t opposites. They exist together, side by side.
The Sinner's Energy Is Strong.
Y’all already know how much I loved Sinners this year. The Southern gothic atmosphere. The myth. The rage. The layered storytelling. The unflinching look at what it means to be Black and Southern and still haunted by systems that want to consume us.
Ring Shout feels like it lives in the same cinematic universe. That mix of horror, folklore, ancestral power, and rage that refuses to simmer down is what I’m here for. It feels hella addictive.
Other favorite highlights:
When Maryse’s blade sang?
When Nana Jean whispered truths that only grandmothers know?
When Sadie went full unhinged loyal bestie?
When the monsters came crawling out like demons fed off white supremacy?
The whole book was all giving Sinners energy. ALL DAY!
Sadie Broke Me. 😭😭
I need a moment to talk about Sadie.
The way she loved Maryse? The loyalty. The ride or die. The “I got you even when you don’t got yourself” kind of love, even when she sacrificed herself in a full-on gun battle with the Ku Kluxes.
“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 Africy.”
That final scene when Sadie speaks to Maryse again at the end in spiritual form and revealed her butterfly wings? 🦋Yeah. I ugly cried. Full-on snot cry, no lie.
“My grandpappy was right.” She winks. “We do get them back.” Two wings unfurl from her behind her: beautiful gold feathers with streaks of black. She spreads them wide, lifting and shooting into the air like an arrow, gone.”
That moment wrecked me and healed me at the same time. Her transformation, her freedom; it was beautiful, painful, soft, and everything all at once. She was wild, but she was always love. Always.
The Audiobook? A Whole Experience.
I have to give the audiobook its flowers, too.💐🌺🌸 🌼The narration was flawless, and the sound effects made me feel like I was sitting at somebody’s grandma’s table, hearing this story unfold. It was part horror, part prophecy, part survival song. The rhythm was intensely Black, deep Southern, and deeply ancestral.
This Book Gave Me:
🩸 Generational rage and survival
🔥 Black women with blades, shotguns, sacred power, and unbreakable friendship
🎶 Juke joints as sacred resistance
🐍 Hoodoo, root work, conjure, and ancestral knowing
🫰🏾 Indigenous wisdom alongside Black resistance
This Book Felt Like:
🌪️ A storm rolling in over Southern farmland
🪶 Ancestors humming in your ear while you sharpen your blade
🎙️ Sitting at Nana’s table while she tells you the real story
🎞️ A Black Southern horror film that refuses to soften its edges
Final Thoughts:
Ring Shout was everything I wanted it to be. It gave me rage but also healing. It gave me monsters but also the power to fight them. It’s one of those books where you close the last page and feel your ancestors nodding, "Yeah, baby, you get it."
For this Juneteenth? This is the energy. Stories that refuse to flinch. Stories that honor our survival while letting us scream, fight, laugh, grieve, and reclaim.
Ring Shout should be next on your list if you loved Sinners like I did.
