New story published in From the Yonder Volume 3 by War Monkey Publications
My supernatural horror story "The Women with Detached Heads" about a wealthy couple from Boston, their housekeeper, and some South East Asian ghost ladies was published in From the Yonder Volume 3, a collection of horror stories with monsters and folklore from around the world.
A print copy can be purchased here
Please note some content warnings with this story: abuse, characters with racist/imperialistic attitudes, implied sexual encounter with unclear consent (not depicted), some gore, and discussion of abortion/pregnancy.
Honestly, I struggled a lot with this story and making sure I got it right. I am still not sure I did. I wanted to play with some horror tropes (like the evil "foreign" monster and the othering of foreign, non-Western people, the "innocent" and long suffering wife of the jerk-y narcissistic husband) and upend them. I find a lot of the lady ghosts/vampires in SE Asian folklore to be interesting as they are both victims of gender based violence but also perpetrators of that violence. Instead of getting revenge on the men or society that has abused them, they go after other women.
Admittedly, I think some of this material I used could get into appropriation territory (I am a white, American author using monsters from outside my culture), so I realize that this story could be problematic. This story is not meant to be an authoritative exploration of SE Asian cultures from an expert but rather using inspiration from their monsters, the history of modern imperialism and colonialism, and the history of horror fiction in the US to make a point about how we in the US view some women in our own society, especially white or white-passing and wealthy women, and how they operate in relation to powerful men and other women. I wanted to make the reader consider which character is the "monster" a few times in the story. Hopefully I've created something that humanizes and examines its characters and does not reinforce stereotypes.
This story was also partially inspired by my time living with a woman in Indonesia who had been a housekeeper for 9 years in Saudi Arabia. The women who are often from poor countries and backgrounds who are brave enough to become housekeepers in foreign countries are often subject to a lot of unreported abuse. The nature of domestic work makes it, I think, easy for abuse to happen and go unreported as a lot of these women are confined to the home, so no one sees what happens. I know American women who complained of abusive employment situations when working as nannies or housekeepers for other American families.
I think when you add to that situation, the nature of employment based visas, poverty, and the fact that many foreign domestic workers don't speak the local language or don't speak it well, and many of them come from low educational backgrounds and may not understand what their rights are, the vulnerability for abuse and mistreatment increases tenfold.
I decided to make my housekeeper Filipina in the story and not Indonesian because there aren't really domestic workers from Indonesia that come to the United States, and I wanted my main couple to be American, as that's the culture I obviously know the most about and was interested in examining critically. Indonesian migrant domestic workers are more likely to end up in Arab or other Asian countries. However, due to the US's close relationship with the Philippines, there are domestic workers from the Philippines here.
The ghosts in the story are appear in folklore all over the SE Asian region, although they may have some local names and variations. I also think that depending on whom you ask and which of the many ethnic groups they are from, the details of how the ghosts behave are going to change and are not set in stone. So please forgive me if I've gotten some of it wrong--I think the characters in the story are also taking and misunderstanding what isn't there's to take.
The couple in the story visits Indonesia and not the Philippines because I've lived in Indonesia, so I can more easily write about it, and also there is an actual city, Pontianak, named after one of the ghosts/vampires and with an interesting history that reminded me a bit of the stories of St Patrick removing all the "snakes" from Ireland. The themes of colonization of the pagan "other" culture by the "civilized" monotheistic culture was something I wanted to play with a bit.
Anyway, I might make a longer blog post with more detailed spoilers later on, if someone reads and wants to discuss it in more detail or even critique what I've written.
Some interesting links:
On Migrant Domestic Workers generally: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/labour-migration/policy-areas/migrant-domestic-workers/lang--en/index.htm
Atlantic Article "My Family's Slave" on the story of one Filipina domestic worker's story in the US: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/
Pontianak Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuntilanak
An interesting article on Indonesian Domestic workers in Saudi Arabia: https://utsynergyjournal.org/2017/11/02/the-diaspora-of-indonesian-female-domestic-workers-in-saudi-arabia-a-case-of-abuse-and-mistreatment/
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