When Marsye enters Butcher Clyde’s shop, she sees that some Ku Kluxes man the door, letting whites into the shop to feast on the meat that Clyde serves them, meat that fuels their hate and works to turn them into Ku Kluxes. They still exist as humans, according to Nana Jean, and this have the ability to escape from the tendrils that attempt to dig themselves deep into the very fiber of their beings. The Klan, though, are whites who have not turned yet. Not everyone can see the monster hiding underneath the human flesh. Butcher Clyde and the Grand Cyclops infect the Ku Kluxes, turning them into devilish monsters that Maryse, Sadie, Chef, and others can identify. Within Ring Shout, the Klan becomes two entities, the Ku Kluxes and the Klan. Maryse initially confronts Butcher Clyde at his shop, Butcher Clyde’s Choice Cuts & Grillery, a shop that caters to whites and that has the Ku Klux Klan as security. While I could focus on any number of aspects in the novella from Nana Jean and her Gullah roots to the threads of Bruh Rabbit and Bruh Bear to the ancestral and generational connections flowing through Maryse as her and her companions battle the Ku Kluxes, I want to zero in on two very minor characters that appear fleetingly in Ring Shout, the white mother and son who Maryse encounters at Butcher Clyde’s shop and who she encounters again following the battle on Stone Mountain. The sheer amount of themes that Clark packs into the novella is, at times, overwhelming, but it all adds to the rich and layered narrative that weaves its way throughout Ring Shout. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout, a lot of things stood out, specifically when thinking about the Gothic and the EthnoGothic.

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