BIPOC Final Girls in Recent Horror Fic

Many stories, many Final Girls. As the title suggests, these YA stories all feature Black girls who survive the horrific tales in which they feature. In essence, it’s a book built entirely around Black Final Girls, and it’s chock full of stories by renowned and fresh voices alike. As the great Tananarive Due writes of Black women in the foreword to this impressive and important collection, “We get to be the heroines, and we get to survive. Cultural value is reflected in the arts, and the Black women in this anthology are asserting that we matter.”

Jade Daniels is one of the toughest finals girls I’ve ever encountered, and she’s my absolute favorite of them all. She’ll leave you cheering and crying in equal measure. Jones’ trilogy spans nearly a decade of Jade’s life, and each time you catch up with her, she’s even tougher and smarter. It’s such an amazing reading experience to watch her come into her own over the course of three incredible novels. From high school to prison and into adulthood, Jade’s character gets more complex and more intense with each installment. I don’t want to give anything away, so suffice it to say that following her journey from a high school outcast grappling with some serious abuse to a chain-smoking teacher hell-bent on protecting her wards is surprisingly moving (and astoundingly bloody).

Jade Nguyen’s just trying to earn enough money to pay for her first year of college, but it turns out that helping her estranged father renovate a crumbling colonial manor in a remote part of Vietnam might be more trouble than it’s worth. The house is multiply haunted, and there’s so much viscerally disturbing insect activity that it’s a wonder she didn’t run screaming after the first few nights. But she wouldn’t be a Final Girl if she did that, would she? Instead, Jade stays to the bitter end and digs deep for that Final Girl resourcefulness to survive the culmination of centuries of colonial violence.

As if growing up in a small town rife with racism wasn’t traumatic enough, as a teen Liz Rocher somehow managed to escape the gruesome fate suffered by the only other Black girl in her high school. Now she has to return to the hometown she left behind, and another young Black girl goes missing in the woods. Liz is determined to save her, but the legacy of violence she uncovers as she chases the girl’s trail goes beyond anything she could ever have imagined. What happens when this erstwhile Final Girl is forced to revisit the scene of the crime is profoundly relevant in the context of contemporary racism.

I don’t typically think of weird Westerns as a place for Final Girls to crop up, but Adelaide Henry sure fits the bill. She’s on the run from her past, and she’s dragging a ridiculously heavy steamer trunk containing her darkest secret along for the ride. If you’re inclined to think the hinterlands of Montana in the early 20th century don’t offer enough people to produce a Final Girl, LaValle’s climactic bloodbath will change your mind. Adelaide gets into all kinds of trouble in the extremely remote and frozen landscape, and her Final Girl survival instincts make her one of the most memorable Final Girls I’ve yet to encounter.

This clever YA novel engages the Final Girl trope head-on. Charity doesn’t have the best home life, so her summer job at Camp Mirror Lake offers a respite from her daily grind. Camp Mirror Lake was the filming location for a classic slasher, so their gig is offering simulations of the bloodshed…and Charity has finally worked her way into the starring role. You guessed it: she plays the Final Girl. Too bad everything goes wrong one week, and what began as a summer job turns into a full-fledged horror story. It’s an interesting meta-Final Girl tale, that’s for sure!

Dead Girls Walking pairs with You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight in really fascinating ways. It’s another YA horror novel set at a camp, but this one offers a drastically different premise. Temple Baker’s dad is a serial killer who confessed to killing her mom while on death row. She’s had to come to terms with being a serial killer’s daughter, but his latest confession prompts her to investigate, only to discover the site of her father’s crimes has been transformed into a camp for queer Black youth who love horror. Temple happens to fit the bill, so she manages to secure a spot on the staff just as the murders begin. This one’s definitely a slasher, and Temple pushes Final Girlness into entirely new places.

Rebellious socialite Noemí Taboada is an unlikely Final Girl. It’s interesting to think of a Final Girl outside of the slasher setting, but Mexican Gothic has all the requisite elements: a history of dead girls, a nefarious threat, and (spoiler alert) a climax that most of the characters don’t survive. It may not be your conventional Final Girl setup, but I love how the Final Girl framework highlights Noemí’s scrappiness and the ability of someone who’s chronically underestimated to survive the most unimaginable horrors. The fact that those horrors are inextricably linked to misogyny and colonialism only adds to this Final Girl’s badassery.

Darkly comedic, There’s No Way I’d Die First starts out with a party hosted by Noelle Layne, a wealthy Black teen at a private school who’s determined to garnish enough interest in her new podcast. Since she’s already been running a horror film club, she figures Halloween is a fantastic time to throw a self-promotional party. But the creepy clown she hires turns out to be a real-life slasher and chaos reigns as she and her elite guest list fight for their lives. The book grapples with issues of race and class as much as it tangles with the Final Girl trope, and the result is a very thoughtful and well-executed (pun intended) read.