Fiction set in the American South that uses grotesque characters, decaying settings, and dark humor to explore the region's troubled history.
Southern gothic transplants the gothic tradition to the American South, trading crumbling European castles for decaying plantations, haunted bayous, and small towns where everyone knows everyone's sins. The genre grapples with the South's specific demons: slavery, racism, poverty, religion, and the weight of a past that refuses to stay buried. Its characters are often grotesque or eccentric, and its humor is as dark as its themes.
Southern gothic demonstrates how genre conventions can be adapted to a specific cultural context. It's also one of the richest traditions in American literature, producing some of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century. Understanding it teaches you how place and history can generate story, and how the grotesque can illuminate rather than just shock.
A man trying to start a church without Christ, O'Connor's signature blend of violence, humor, and religious obsession.
A ghost story that makes the trauma of slavery physical and present, Southern gothic as historical reckoning.
Modern Southern gothic: a road trip through Mississippi where the dead travel alongside the living.
Write a scene set in a decaying house or property in a rural setting. A family gathering or a visit from an outsider. Through the physical details of the place (peeling paint, overgrown gardens, a room nobody enters), reveal something about the family's history they don't discuss out loud. The setting is the confession.