“Dracula” by Bram Stoker: Exploring the Vampire Archetype

Oooh, vampires. 🙂

Stuff Jeff Reads

The vampire is a powerful archetype and one that is manifest in our modern society—that being that lives in darkness, feeds of the life-force of others, and is motivated by selfishness and the baser animalistic instincts. This archetype is fully explored in Bram Stoker’s classic horror story, Dracula.

There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.

(p. 227)

I suspect we have all had experiences with individuals who embody the vampire archetype. They are the ones who drain us when we are around them, with whom we must always keep up our guards, and who seem to thrive on the fear and pain of others.

The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is…

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Sometimes I Read Slow, Sometimes I Read Quick

Nice & Smooth is an East Coast hip hop duo from New York City that consists of Gregory O. "Greg Nice" Mays and Darryl O. "Smooth B" Barnes plus their deejay Tedd "DJ Teddy Tedd" Whiting. Like most music I took a fancy to, my older brothers had introduced them to me. Back in the 90s …

The Taínos Refused to Grow Food. The Spanish Starved.

Historical accounts are often entertaining…oh, and interesting and educational. 🙂

Repeating Islands

A report by Jess Romeo for JStor Today.

In the late fifteenth century, Spanish colonizers in the Caribbean were starving in a land of plenty. They had just established their newest settlement, La Isabela, in what is now the Dominican Republic. The Spaniards planned to survive by exploiting the area’s indigenous people, the Taínos. But the Taínos refused to plant their annual crops, in protest of the Spanish invasion and appropriation of their lands.

This act of rebellion, writes environmental historian Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, “stemmed from the native population’s recognition of their control over the food supply.” She dubs it “the New World’s first food fight.”

The effect was immediate. In historical records, Spanish colonist Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo refers to the event as the natives’ “evil scheme.” He describes the crisis in grim detail: death caused by starvation left “a pervasive pestiferous stench over the land.”

Death…

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A Grotesque Caricature

In need of in-depth historical analysis and commentary for Lovecraft Country? This is where it’s at: “But what moved me to write this blog, was the way that the show used “Black caricature to symbolize the grotesque and inspire racial terror. Because as always, there’s a history there. And as Due herself has so profoundly stated, ‘Black history is Black horror.”

Phenderson Djèlí Clark

Lovecraft Country, those frightening girls, and a history of grotesque Black caricature.

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Mental Health Matters: No More People Pleasing!

I.Need.This.

K E Garland

My mother used to tell a story of when I was in pre-k. When she picked me up, the children played on the lawn, pretending to cross a bridge. I was the bridge. I lay flat on the grass, while my friends walked on me.

Even at four years old, I demonstrated the lengths I’d go through to be liked. My desire only increased as I aged.

By the time Dwight and I met, it was easy to switch out a short, honey-blonde hairstyle for longer, brown tresses he’d once commented he preferred. I traded my red lipstick for a natural brown color and stopped wearing bright green shorts for plain, denim ones. I faded into the background of life to ensure he’d always like me, ignoring the fact that he liked me when we met.

I’d mastered people pleasing beyond marriage.

In 2016, my director invited me to a…

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Mistakes I’ve Made While Writing My First Book

A Writer's Path

by Manas Patil

The biggest mistake one can make while writing a book is to give up. Writing a book can be exciting yet challenging at the same time, we’ve all been there. I almost gave up before my draft made it to an editor. But I did finish. Though I did finish my first book, I made a few blunders that I could’ve avoided from the start.

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