Interview with Tamika Thompson about Unshod, Cackling, and Naked
I was instantly intrigued by the title and cover for Unshod, Cackling, and Naked, a new horror collection (one you’ve probably heard about) by Tamika Thompson. I love funny horror, and I could tell these stories were going to have elements of humor, what with the little bats holding up the butt-covering title. Once I looked closer, I could see the broken glass and a trail of blood. This collection was so much fun to read, and yet so devastating at the same time.
These stories are full of the horror of the unexplained as well as the horror of the everyday. I’ve never been crazy about bats, but if I ever see one during the daytime now, I’m going to run. But Tamika Thompson also shows us the horrors of loneliness and neglect, of beauty contests and family trees. Unshod, Cackling, and Naked is available to purchase now!
In this interview, she offers her witty and insightful perspectives on writing horror and dealing with horrors in real life. While you’re here, visit her website and sign up for her newsletter -- www.tamikathompson.com/
Not only are these stories frightening, but they're also funny and filled with grief (which reminds me of the hilarious repetition of "a juxtaposition, if you will" from your story "The Bats"). Who are some writers and storytellers who inspired your style?
Thank you for reading my work and for your kind words.
My true writing training occurred in graduate school, where I studied broadcast journalism. Although I took up journalism at a university, I see journalism and writing as a trade, not a profession, and I therefore write for people, not for academics, and certainly not for other writers. So, my writing style is direct, spare, and at times staccato. I was trained to write for all audiences, and to not adorn my prose, to be accessible to the person rushing to work, who only has a few minutes to receive the message or perhaps the person cooking, who is listening to the story unfold on the television in the next room. What of the person who never went to college? What of the reader who only picks up one book a year? That’s how I came to my trade, anyway, so my style is the kind of prose you might find in the crime section of a newspaper.
During those early years in my writing career, I was drawn to writers whose prose was spare—George Orwell in Animal Farm, Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea, and Charles Bukowski in Post Office. An author I read at that time who made me excited about storytelling is Walter Mosley. If I had a top ten list of favorite opening lines, “I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy’s bar,” from Devil in a Blue Dress would be on it. So much of what will unfold in the book is right there in those twelve words—a first-person account by a street-smart person, race and racism, a character named Joppy who will play a significant role in the events to come, a bar that white people don’t typically frequent, and a boatload of mystery. From Mosley’s rendering of Easy Rawlins, I understood tension, dialogue, suspense, conflict, character, and theme.
I went on to read Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler, and eventually, when I became serious about the horror genre specifically, Tananarive Due, Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and, of course, Stephen King.
Where do you usually start with your stories…the concept, the character, the language, the style? Maybe a combination?
The best way to describe how my stories make it from concept to page is to talk about seeds. The seeds are real-life events I experience, witness, or read about. My mind is the soil, so when the idea gets into my head, it mixes with all of the nutrients of my active (overactive?) imagination. My writing and revision processes are equivalent to me watering and turning my plant toward the sun.
For instance, the seed for “The Turn” was someone on the street walking by, pushing their dog in a stroller while wearing a puppy in a baby carrier on their chest. Until the person got close, I’d thought they were pushing and carrying children.
The seed for my story “The Bats” was my mother’s experience decades ago with an actual bat that attached itself to the screen door to her patio in the middle of the day. It just stayed there, staring through the mesh at her. Online research told her that because bats are nocturnal, the one on her screen was likely sick.
The seed for “These Parts” was a real-life carjacking attempt I experienced as a teenager.
The seed for “I Am Goddess” is every ad I see for facial rejuvenation and anti-aging products.
“Bridget Has Disappeared” grew out of a character I’d developed who is a journalist. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if there is a question he can’t really answer, a truth he can’t actually uncover?
At times I wish I could turn off this constant internal story-creation, but I know that both in journalism and in writing, it is my job to witness and observe.
Unshod, Cackling, and Naked explores many ways that the world could fall apart that I hadn't considered before. What are some dangers that scare you the most?
For many people, the world has already fallen apart and continues to do so, again and again. And I don’t mean folks in some far-away country; I mean right here in the United States. But the people often experiencing that devastation are marginalized, so nothing changes. The frustration I have with that reality makes its way into my work. I certainly felt that my world had fallen apart when I was a child. My first memory is a funeral for my uncle who was shot to death. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic, when gun violence was a near-daily occurrence. I’d hear gunshots out my window at night, helicopters hovering above my home, especially in summer.
And now that I am an adult and raising children of my own, the epidemic of gun violence has spread to all parts of the country. Today, everyone is experiencing the fear that so-called inner-city residents experienced thirty and forty years ago. Life in the United States is terrifying, but it always has been, particularly for people of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ communities.
Other dangers? The January 6th coup attempt, a coup that continues in our statehouses across the country. A healthcare system that allows black women to die during childbirth. An inept federal government that cost us more than a million lives during the coronavirus pandemic. Fascism. Drought. Wildfires. Atmospheric rivers. Landslides. I think these dangers are what propel horror writers. We are willing to confront our fears on the page.
My dad frequently advises me to always fill up my gas tank once it's half-empty, and after finishing your collection, I think I'll take his advice! Are you generally prepared for a disaster?
Smart man, your dad, and he and I have a lot in common in this area. I rarely go below a half tank. I keep emergency supplies in my home. I know all the escape routes. I have a U.S. road atlas so I can get the hell out of my state without GPS if I needed to. When the global coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, I already had a stash of protective masks because I used to wear them on flights during the flu season. In other words, I’m always ready for the zombie apocalypse!
As best they could, my parents prepared me for the reality of living in this country. As African American people, not only could we not count on police, fire, and quality healthcare being available to us in times of emergency, but Black people are also ongoing victims of state-enacted terror, so, the police could come and kill us with little to no provocation and typically with no repercussions.
My parents instructed me as a child to never call the police if a crime occurred. If I needed help, I was to contact close family members. Police were our enemies, they told me, and I had to behave as such. Ditto for talking to law enforcement about crimes. “Close the curtains. Keep your mouth shut. Say, ‘I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything. I was asleep.’”
If there were a medical emergency, then I could call 911, but I had to emphasize that it was a medical emergency and that we needed an ambulance. Honestly, though, even that was dicey in our neighborhood because the ambulances were slow to come. I remember Flavor Flav’s song “911 is a Joke,” and it was true where I lived.
What kinds of horror would you like to see more of?
What I write, and what I’d like to see more writers of color create, are stories that center characters of color but without the story being about their race traumas or even revisiting that in the work. Certainly race/racism would be the context of the lives for many characters of color, but so many stories by black writers in particular end up regurgitating slavery/reconstruction/Jim Crow/Civil Rights Movement narratives, and I’m certainly not going to pick up and read any more of that no matter how brilliant the writing is.
Some characters in Unshod, Cackling, and Naked are struggling with almost insurmountable problems, from addiction to abuse. They all try different tactics like loving themselves, fighting back, and accepting their own pain, but no tactic always works. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, and it doesn't always seem fair. What are you trying to tell us about suffering (our own and other people's)?
“Love is patient, love is kind.” Isn’t that what we always recite at weddings? But depending on which version of the bible you read, the line can also read “love suffers long and is kind,” or “charity suffers long and is kind.” Are love and charity the same thing? How about patience and suffering? If you’ve ever had to forgive a betrayal, you might view love, charity, and suffering as one force, and we all will have our day with it.
Many of these characters strip down and find themselves "unshod, cackling, and naked" when they stop playing roles they don't want to play. After a breakthrough moment, what happens next?
I write transgressive fiction, in which the characters break free of their constraints in sometimes violent ways. Violence has consequences, and often creates more suffering. In “I Am Goddess,” in which a mistreated wife rises up against her husband, she breaks free, and justifiably so. But this is an origin story, and about two-thirds of the way through the piece, most readers will start to part ways with her morally. In “Under the Crown,” in which a beauty queen emotionally implodes on stage, she also breaks free of her bondage, but without physically harming anyone, and I think she moves on to freedom, self-love, and real beauty.
In your story "These Parts," you say, "in the end, it's hard to explain a life you've survived to someone who has no perspective on it." Do you think it's possible to achieve this through fiction, or do you think it still falls short?
That is one of the fantastic outcomes of fiction, isn’t it? Empathy. Stepping into another character’s life and having their interiority become your own. Fiction can certainly move us in that direction, but it is not a substitute for knowing people in real life. Fiction falls short because many people will use those characters as their only window into the people they’re reading about, will then hold up that piece of fiction and say that they now understand the experience. But knowing people in real life, particularly outside of our immediate circles and bubbles–that’s when a person truly gains perspective on another.
What projects are you working on now? Do you think you’ll return to any concepts from this collection in the future?
I am at work on a novel, a novella, and several shorter works. I spent two years studying youth violence in America, and violence is a theme that runs throughout much of my work and will continue to do so.
Thank you so much, Tamika!