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purrito620's review
2.0
This collection was more like a bunch of racist, sexist stories than horror. I had a really difficult time making my way through this book because it was so offensive. In one of the stories, the "monsters" were literally Asian people, and in another story the author could not stop describing women's breasts repeatedly and failing in his imagination and vocabulary to say anything other than they were "firm" over and over.
The large majority of the authors were white men, and it really shows. There were basically no female characters that had any depth or weren't there just for decoration or to be ravaged and saved. With regards to people of color, they were either exoticized or portrayed as simple, backwards, and - the age old - "savage" people. Many of the "horrors" were really just amplifications of how white men wrongly viewed other cultures (i.e. "primitives" in the African jungle, "mystique" of ancient Egyptians, the "demonic" look of "Mongoloid" people).
I'm glad I read this so that I personally learned how biased and discriminatory (horror) writers used to be. Modern literature still isn't perfect but it sure is better than this. 2 stars because there were a few stories that I did enjoy.
The large majority of the authors were white men, and it really shows. There were basically no female characters that had any depth or weren't there just for decoration or to be ravaged and saved. With regards to people of color, they were either exoticized or portrayed as simple, backwards, and - the age old - "savage" people. Many of the "horrors" were really just amplifications of how white men wrongly viewed other cultures (i.e. "primitives" in the African jungle, "mystique" of ancient Egyptians, the "demonic" look of "Mongoloid" people).
I'm glad I read this so that I personally learned how biased and discriminatory (horror) writers used to be. Modern literature still isn't perfect but it sure is better than this. 2 stars because there were a few stories that I did enjoy.
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