sinners

Figured since there are still people out there watching Sinners for the first time, this list might be of use.


The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Often recommended for people who watched and enjoyed "Sinners". A piece of dark historical fiction about a Blackfoot vampire called Good Stab and the priest he recounts his story to. A tragic piece of writing that weaves together the violence of colonization with elements of folklore and the supernatural. A must read if you loved "Sinners", in my humble opinion. Its got the vampires, the blood-soaked real life history, the front-facing violence of colonization and assimilation, all packed into a truly heartwrenching narrative where the vampirism is as much a metaphor as it is literal.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

My personal number one pick for a book that instantly reminded me of Sinners if Sinners leaned even harder into the supernatural and folklore. It centers three young women fighting monsters known as "Ku Kluxes", physical manifestations of racial violence who were summoned into the world after a screening of Birth of a Nation bolstered the Klan's hold on American society. This book is a master class in how to weave folklore, the supernatural, and real life American history into a cohesive narrative.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

This one's not about vampires, but it does have at least a few themes that resonated with what Sinners was doing, at least in my opinion. This one's about a group of sea-dwellers directly descended from pregnant enslaved African women who were thrown off slave ships. A focus on what it means to bear the weight of a shared painful history.

Fledgling by Octavia E Butler

The last book Octavia E. Butler ever wrote and published. It's about a girl called Shori who belongs to a long-lived race referred to as Ina. This technically isn't a book about vampires because the Ina are just another race coexisting with humanity. It's another take on vampires melded with science fiction.

The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo by Uriah Derick D'Arcy

A short story credited for being the first Black vampire story and the first comedic vampire story.