The Reformatory
by Tananarive Due
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted August 29, 2024
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Tananarive Due's latest novel is fiction, yet it is steeped in historical references. The main character shares the name of one of her relatives who died at the Dozier School for Boys in 1937, but the fate of Robert Stephens Jr (Robbie) is different in this book, as is the depiction of his father. Robbie's sister Gloria was strongly influenced by Tananarive's mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, and a NAACP lawyer is based on her father, John Dorsey Due. The Dozier school was in Marianna, Florida, about 60 miles northwest of the state capital of Tallahassee. Marianna is mentioned in the book, but most of the events take place in fictional Gracetown, setting of several other of Due's stories. Gracetown is notorious for its hauntings by ghosts, 'haints,' but not all are necessarily connected to the reformatory.
The Reformatory has already won two awards, the Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker for Best Horror Novel. This weekend we will learn if it also wins a Dragon Award, and later this year, for World Fantasy.
I will say at the start that it is very well written, but also very intense, with a lot of traumatic events. It is 1950, within the era known as the Jim Crow South. Blacks might have been free of slavery, but never forget the 13th Amendment stipulated that freedom was contingent on: "…except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Of course, in the interpretation of some white judges, a conviction could be freely determined without an indictiment or jury trial. Almost everything blacks did was subject to scrutiny, especially how they acted around whites. Twelve-year-old Robbie is sentenced to a six month stay at the Gracetown School for Boys. His "crime" was kicking a white boy who was harassing his sister. Robbie appeared before the judge on the same day he was taken from his home by a young sheriffs deputy, no attorney present, with the judge basing his decision on the word of the father of the white boy. The McCormack's owned more than half the county, and that clearly included politicians, judges, and other law enforcement personnel. In Robbie's case, it wasn't so much what he had done, but a backlash against his father, well known in the area as a civil rights activist, as well as a labor organizer. He had fled Florida after being accused of raping a white woman.
From the author's afterword: "The Reformatory has a central villain, but the actual villain is a system of dehumanization." The central villain is the school's supervisor (read warden), Fenton J. Haddock, a sadist and psychopath, whom Robbie surmises had killed quite a few boys at the school, and long before that too, when he was just a boy. But the whole town knew of the horrors of the school, since it was not just for black boys, although the white inmates were from poor families. Several townsfolk worked there, including a few black men, so they were all complicit in the horrors. I won't detail what those horrors entailed, since I am sure most can imagine it. I read parts of the afterword before the book, but there were times I thought Due might not follow through on her statement of wanting to give Robbie a happier ending than befell her great uncle. The horror, the trepidation of what might come next, caused me to set the book aside after nearly every chapter, so it took me longer to read than normal.
Robbie was sure he saw the ghost of his dead mother long before his reformatory ordeal began. At the school, he also saw, or sometimes just heard, the haints of boys who had died there. Some were just vague shapes without details, although one was so solid and realistic it took Robbie a few days to realize "Blue" was a haint. He had died in an arson fire some thirty years before, and was still hanging around, plotting his revenge. He manipulated Robbie, and another boy, "Redbone," into doing his bidding. Robbie's sensing of the haints is not the only supernatural element. Haddock, along with one of his minions, had an obsession of capturing the essence of the haints, and he recruited Robbie into helping them. Robbie didn't want to, and Blue strongly objected, but he saw no other option. Also, Gloria was gifted (or cursed) with premonitions of the future, although she could never be sure if her visions would come true. She hoped some of them would not. She sensed the fates of two people she met, both historical figures, although I won't identify them or mention what happened to them.
If you are black you probably won't read this as fiction. If you are white, even if you are progressive and open to the faults in our history, it may be more than you're willing to bear. Each reader will have to decide for themselves. I am not sorry I read it, and I am sure to be thinking of it for a long time, but it was very emotional. Plus, there are several historical figures and events I need to research for more information. Both Robbie and Gloria liked to read, him mostly fiction, but she read history, and particulary books written by blacks. They were also aided by a black woman, fictional as far as I know, a music teacher at the school, who learned too late what she had gotten herself into. She encouraged both Stephens' children to never give up on their hopes and dreams, to never stop working for more freedom for their people. Something Due's family did, and Tananarive continues to do in their name.
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