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We’re excited to announce the launch of “Voices from the Hill” a podcast dedicated to showcasing the incredible talent right here in our literary backyard. As a proud member of this vibrant community, Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature believes our local authors deserve a platform to share not just their published works, but the stories behind them.
If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org.
Welcome to Voices from the Hill, celebrating the vibrant literary voices of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host, Jennifer Barone, along with Joseph Carboni, owner of Telegraph Hill Books. Each episode, we sit down with a local author to explore their creative process, inspirations, and the unique stories that shape our community. Today on Voices from the Hill, I'm joined by Bay Area author Tamika Thompson, whose debut novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, blends horror and social commentary in a way that feels both haunting and deeply real. Set in a Michigan housing community, the novel explores fear not just as something supernatural, but as something shaped by place, history, and lived experience, touching on themes of violence, race, and collective memory.
Jennifer Barone:Tamika is part of a new wave of writers redefining horror, using this genre as a lens to examine the realities that often go unseen and to ask what it means not just to be afraid, but to be witnessed. Today, we'll talk about writing at the intersection of horror and truth, how play shapes story, and what it means to use fiction as a way to confront the world we're currently living in. So let's dive in. Tamika Thompson, welcome to Voices from the Hill. Thank you for being here.
Jennifer Barone:Thank you for sharing this work. And I wanted to start, of course, with you reading a passage. But first, I wanted to talk about this new genre to see, like, how you connected to it because this is your debut novel. So how did you, connect to this idea of social horror? And is that the right term for it?
Tamika Thompson:Thank you for having me. That's definitely the correct term for it. My background is in journalism and political science. I grew up in Michigan in Detroit, and when I went to college, I studied political science. And when I went to graduate school, I studied journalism, and I began working as a journalist for network news and then later for a PBS show.
Tamika Thompson:And so much of what I was focused on, in my studies and also in my work were social issues. I had talked to gang members when I was on my beat as a as a graduate student. I spent two years studying gang violence, youth violence, and gun violence, in the country. And by the time I began writing, those voices that I had, that I had encountered in my research were were haunting me. And I originally thought I was going to create a documentary around the people that I spoke to in the in the narratives and the stories.
Tamika Thompson:But I ended up not making that documentary, but those voices were still there. And so I put them in this book. When I was growing up in Detroit, I grew up in a high crime neighborhood at the height of the crack epidemic, and I lost my uncle to gun violence. And there were other people around in my family in the neighborhood who were shot to death or who ended up in prison. And so it's a deeply personal story, but it also combines the research that I had done.
Tamika Thompson:And I think social horror is probably the best way to describe it because there is the speculative element, but there's also the grounding in reality, the harsh reality of gun violence in the country.
Jennifer Barone:I was thinking to myself, like, what is it about the horror, like, genre though that you decided to tell this story through? Right? Because this is your first novel. Like, did you try other methods before that? Like, for instance, journaling or other, like, creative forms before going hard might be the lens that I want to tell this story
Tamika Thompson:through. That that also goes back into my childhood. When I was growing up, we had an oral tradition of storytelling in my family, and my mother and grandmother used to tell me bedtime stories, but the bedtime stories were usually horror stories. Oh, wow. And and I think within my family, you know, my my grandparents being from Southern Alabama and from Georgia and my parents being in a really rough neighborhood when I was growing up, that they really were preparing me for life and what life...
Tamika Thompson:The harsh realities of life in this country by making sure that I was always ready, that I was always on guard, that I had to think about what danger was around or could... That I could face. And so the stories were cathartic in that way. I think that they were teaching me. They were also a lot of fun.
Tamika Thompson:So when I made the transition from being a journalist to being a writer, I think initially, I thought I was just going to tell, you know, literary stories or write literary novels, but everything that I was writing came out very dark. And I was even hearing from editors, this story is really depressing, or this story is really grotesque, or this story is really weird, or this... You know, I was getting this feedback, but it was all sounding really great to me. So much of journalism in news is horrific. Yes.
Tamika Thompson:And I think there was just this this through line that was always there from from my childhood to political science when I was studying comparative politics and what was going on in the world and how... What was happening on the streets of Detroit was also happening in in far flung countries across the world. And then to journalism, it just kind of made sense. The thing that I love about horror is that it allows me to explore the grotesque, to face violence head on and show it on the page, to put the pain on the page in a way that the that the reader expects. And so I don't think I'm really...
Tamika Thompson:I don't think anyone is really caught off guard by the work because they come to the work expecting that. I still put content warnings in it because I don't want to trigger anyone, but I think when you let them know that it's a horror story, they're willing to go there with you. And I think exploring horror... The social aspects of it through speculative and through horror, think, is the... Is just...
Tamika Thompson:For me, is the is the way to do it in a way that it lands emotionally for the reader.
Jennifer Barone:I was gonna ask about the horror genre. Like, is there something about it that liberates you to, you know, tell a story in a different way? Yeah. Go into gory details, how supernatural things happen, but you're still really at heart wanting to bring forward these issues, in a very, impactful way. Right?
Jennifer Barone:But what is it, yeah, about horror specifically that that maybe liberates you as a writer?
Tamika Thompson:I think the fun thing in this book was the idea of the curse. Mhmm. And I felt like I was able to explore the idea of a multigenerational, intergenerational curse in a way that I wouldn't have if I had told this as a straight narrative that didn't have any speculative elements in it. And it it does bring up the question of whether or not Nona, our main character, and and the other characters who live in this public housing project, whether or not what they are experiencing is the the curse of living in this place within a country that otherwise wants them dead or if it is a supernatural curse. And I think it can be explained either way.
Tamika Thompson:I think the the horror genre allows me to explore what this curse that they are experiencing really is. There is a spirit around the place that they live in, the setting that they are in that is specific to the housing authority neglecting them and neglecting the space. The fact that they have rodents and roaches and leaky pipes, mold, appliances that are faulty, trash that is not collected, the hospital and the health care system is not there to help them, The megachurch preys upon them. There's a spirit that they carry with them. And the young men in this book, especially, because of what has been done to them in the past, they carry a certain spirit with them.
Tamika Thompson:Is that spirit the spirit of the institutional violence that is done to them and it is manifesting outward, or is it the supernatural? Is there something supernatural at play? Is there something, intangible that is coming through them? A a possession, perhaps.
Jennifer Barone:Mhmm.
Tamika Thompson:And and I and I stuck with that because I think that it, in a lot of ways, shows how the violence, particularly the gun violence, is very much an epidemic in this country and that there is a certain spirit, There is a certain viral aspect to the slayings, how one person can kill, and then it triggers this domino effect of other people who have to retaliate and and have to go out and get revenge. And so that's why I chose to do it that way.
Jennifer Barone:Well, since you're already getting us into a little bit of the plot, I would love for you to give our audience, you know, an idea, without giving away too much of the plot of this book, and then tell us about, like, some of the characters that come to life.
Tamika Thompson:Yeah. There are APOV characters in this story, and The Curse of Hester Gardens follows the main character, Nona McKinley, who is dealing with the twin specters of a supernatural curse and gun violence in her high crime neighborhood. When the story begins, her husband is already imprisoned for drug dealing, and her eldest son, Kendall, was shot to death at 18. And she has two remaining boys, one of which, Marcus, her her second oldest, is, a valedictorian in his high school class, and he has been accepted to an Ivy League school. And she really is hanging all of her hopes on him that he can get out and eventually bring her and her youngest out of Hester Gardens.
Tamika Thompson:But then strange things begin to happen, in her unit, super... Things that she believes are supernatural at the same time that Marcus and her youngest fall in with the neighborhood gang, the Hester boys. And Marcus specifically has begun to act strange and at times doesn't seem like himself at all. And she begins to wonder whether or not something that she did in the past, a decision that she made in the past has has now come back to haunt her and is after her and her sons.
Jennifer Barone:Mhmm. I'd love for you to read us a little passage.
Tamika Thompson:Yes.
Jennifer Barone:That'd be great. The,
Tamika Thompson:the scene that I'm going to read from, I I would like to say, I began, this developing this scene in a workshop workshop with with Tananarib Tananari Du, who is, one of my north stars, just an amazing horror author, and, she actually gave me a blurb that appears on the cover of the book. So it was a full circle moment. 05/28/2016, only a few Hester Gardens townhomes face north, and in Medford lore, they were the reason the public housing complex was haunted. When the sun rose on the eastern facing units that overlooked the Rogers Freeway, light poured into the tiny windows, baking the occupants from May through September and reminding them of summer the rest of the year. For the homes that faced west, the setting sun bathed the walls in eerie pinks and purples reminiscent of late afternoon funerals down south.
Tamika Thompson:The handful of southern facing dwellings were dim most of the day except around noon when the sun was high enough to peek through curtains like an intrusive neighbor. But the haunted quarters were the ones facing north or so everyone said. For those homes, the sun never seemed to rise, the days were cast in a never ending pall of gray, and the murdered just didn't know how to leave. Nota McKinley's unit faced north. On the morning of her middle son's high school graduation, she showered, powdered herself, and primped in her bedroom mirror.
Tamika Thompson:It was a quarter past six, and she'd been up since 4AM cleaning and fretting filled with a range of emotions she couldn't quite place. She fastened her favorite bra, the best of the three she owned because it crafted the deepest cleavage and hummed along to a gospel tune flowing from the television pastor Davis had bought her. The song had also played at her eldest son's funeral. Kendall, that wound was still so raw. Being home alone was a rare but welcome event.
Tamika Thompson:A full bed alongside a milk crate draped with the neighbor's discarded curtains completed her room, and the makeshift nightstand housed her blessing oil and bible. The bars on the lone window and the narrowness of the room were her prison. Back when Vance still lived there, the space had seemed larger. His mere presence had stretched apart the walls and pushed up the ceiling. She searched her closet for something that might dress up the outfit she would wear.
Tamika Thompson:At the back, she found the skirt she'd worn that day in the alley. It had taken her weeks to remove the bloodstains. Vance had made her promise not to throw it in the trash. I can burn it, she offered. Nothing out of the ordinary, he countered.
Tamika Thompson:Just clean it and hang it again like you do with all of your clothes on a normal week. The memory of Naderius came to her of his hand reaching for her skirt, but she wouldn't let him haunt her this day, not at such a special moment, the occasion she'd been waiting for when all of her hopes and dreams and back breaking work were finally paying off. She wasn't expecting the boys to return home before the ceremony. In fact, she was set to meet them there. So when her front door groaned open and slammed shut, she drew in a breath and stared at the image of her own wide eyes.
Tamika Thompson:With her bra hooked but backward on her torso, she snapped off the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and waited for familiar footsteps, deliberate if they belong to Marcus, the graduate, dawdling if they were Lance's, the middle schoolers. These footfalls were neither. They rushed across her floor as if set aflame. Was it a junkie or one of the boys from the local gang, the Hester boys, rummaging through her kitchen drawers? How would they have gotten in?
Tamika Thompson:She had wrought iron on the front door, and there were but two ways a person could force entry, one of which involved a screwdriver. Only she, Marcus, and Lance had keys, and her boys would never lose nor loan theirs. She prayed it was Marcus stomping across the living room floor, drawing closer to her room. Perhaps he'd forgotten the printout for his speech. Marcus?
Tamika Thompson:She didn't like the way the movement stopped on the other side of the wall. The clock ticked louder than usual. Across the hall, the toilet bubbled. Sweat formed on her upper lip and about her temples, and she pressed her palm to her chest hoping the gesture would calm her breathing. No answer from the living room.
Tamika Thompson:She rushed forward and pressed the dime sized gold lock on her bedroom door. With trembling fingers almost too thick to work, she tugged her bra into place, slid on her blouse, and zipped her hips into her pencil skirt. She tiptoed back to the dresser and quietly searched the top for her phone. Mabel. She called Mabel Cleveland.
Tamika Thompson:Mabel lives several doors down in Hester Gardens and was always armed even at funerals, even in line at the neighborhood food pantry. Where was Nona's cell? Blush brushes, BB cream, and her bottle of blue black mascara covered the dresser top, but no phone. She eased open the drawer in case the device had fallen in. It wasn't there either.
Tamika Thompson:Nerves stabbed her stomach and chest. She must have left it on the kitchen counter. Her only way to call for help was on the other side of her home out where the steps gave way to a dragging sound, a heaviness being pulled across her floors. It's me, someone said. The voice moved to the hallway outside her bedroom door closer, louder.
Tamika Thompson:It's me. She snatched up the metal baseball bat she kept beside her bed, careful not to make a sound. She didn't know who was on the other side of the thin wood, but the voice, deadpan, bass heavy, and evil, didn't belong to any of her sons. How could such a flimsy lock keep her safe? She backed up bumping her nightstand and knocking her bible to the floor.
Tamika Thompson:She regretted making Vance get rid of the revolver he'd kept in the milk crate. Floorboards creaked on the other side of the door. You you better get out of my house if you know what's good for you. She drew closer to the wood again hoping to sound like a large menacing person who had a weapon and perhaps also knew how to throw a punch, but her voice came out shrill and weak. The doorknob rotated slowly, the motion barely emitting a sound.
Tamika Thompson:The handle squeaked in protest as someone moved it left, right, left, right. The lock pastor had installed worked after all. The metal held. When she didn't open the door, the intruder violently shook it in its frame. A crack the size of a strand of hair appeared near the edge.
Tamika Thompson:It wouldn't take much more pressure to break through. She wished she hadn't told pastor to install those irons on the bedroom windows in the front door. Now she had no way to get out. She pressed her ear to the wood, the post of her stud earring dug into the flesh behind her lobe. Everything came to a stop.
Tamika Thompson:She brought the bat to her right shoulder anyway, gripping the handle and gearing up to swing. Her pulse throbbed against her temples. Tears burned the outer corners of her eyes. The clock beside the bedroom door ticked as the red hand crept forward. The thin rod counted down the seconds until she came face to face with this prowler.
Tamika Thompson:She waited. Her pounding heart echoed in her ears.
Jennifer Barone:There's so much. Yeah. Thank you. There's so much to the way that you're approaching this novel that's very different, and I found, than other horror novels in the sense that there's emotional content. There's we talk about violence, or even immediately when we think about a horror novel, we about like horror movies and how hyper violent they are in movie.
Jennifer Barone:But there's a quietness to some of the dialogue that's in this book and the conversations that are being had. And so can you talk a little bit about that approach to the genre for you?
Tamika Thompson:So much of the horror and the fear that is experienced is internal to Nona specifically. She is desperate and panicked. And so much of what drives this novel, I feel, is her anxiety around what she fears will happen to Marcus and Lance and her trying to convince others that what she is experiencing is real, both both the supernatural part, but also that they are in danger, that the Hester boys, the gang, is after her boys, and that there is, that she does have a reason to be worried. And I think that's what drives the narrative more so than the external is really this this internal, dialogue that she has, with herself. This this sort of stepping outside of her religion, which is, you know, the first thing that she has to tackle because her religion is is is limited when it comes to trying to explain what she's experiencing, but also, just wondering for her herself, is this real?
Tamika Thompson:Can I trust what I am experiencing? Mhmm. Is this grief? She's experiencing a very specific type of grief, and I and I talk about this because I've experienced this myself both from losing my uncle, you know, the the stigma that is attached to, dying violently, but also I lost my father to alcoholism. And there is a certain shame in in stigma and guilt that surrounds those deaths that you don't see with, let's say, if you lose someone to cancer.
Tamika Thompson:There's there's almost like a, a pride with that. Right? The person fought valiantly, and we we assign all of these things to those types of deaths, but not to, deaths that are stigmatized. We saw some of this with with AIDS. Right?
Tamika Thompson:Yeah. Where you lose someone to that, and there's, like, this whole secondary narrative that gets created around it. And so she's experiencing that. And there's a part of her that wonders if some of what she is seeing and feeling and hearing and smelling is a manifestation of her deep grief and shame around losing her oldest and and her husband being imprisoned. And she starts off at the beginning of this very self righteous.
Tamika Thompson:For anyone who's who's read this already, she's she's a very self righteous, kind of obnoxious character because she has built so much of her identity around her church. Mhmm. And there's this megachurch, and she's having this affair with the pastor of the of the mega church. So she's not a perfect character by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I think the fact that she is flawed and she and she is unaware of a lot that's going on with her sons is what actually makes people, or at least made me love her, and and really want everything that happens to be a blessing to her because she's gone through so much. And and you really don't want all of the things that she fears to happen to her.
Tamika Thompson:But it's a horror novel, so you know some of it's gonna happen.
Jennifer Barone:The idea that you just mentioned about, like, can I even believe what I feel or can I even believe what I just saw, feels also very related, like the kind of gaslighting to women in general? Is there an aspect to writing in this genre too that coming from a woman's perspective can bring a new lens to this horror genre, as well as a black woman's perspective, and the things that are experienced only by that group? So can you talk a little bit about that? Where do you see this genre being taken in a new new space through those lenses?
Tamika Thompson:I think for her, she's having a very specific experience around motherhood that is not fully appreciated by the other characters that she's interacting with, and they do make her feel as if she is overreacting every time she raises a concern. One of the the things that is repeated to her is boys will be boys, and that if her sons are having a disagreement or conflict or even a fight, a fist fight, that really this is just kind of expected. This is what this is what boys do, and you're a mom. You don't really understand. They're older now.
Tamika Thompson:You know, at, you know, at the at the current time in the story, Marcus is 18, and he's, you know, he's giving this speech at his graduation. And he's at a point that the other characters who are talking to her are telling her this is a natural transition. He's supposed to be pulling away from you. You are not supposed to know where he's going. He shouldn't be checking in with you.
Tamika Thompson:And for a middle class mother who has not experienced what she has and has not had the trauma and and and does not have to raise boys that she's preparing for a harsh reality at the same time that she's not breaking their spirit, Yes. That could be true. It could be true that that mother is overreacting, but Nona is not. She's already gone through hell. She's already lost her oldest, so she knows a fist fight in her neighborhood is not just a fist fight.
Tamika Thompson:And so this very much grew out of my experience as a black mother. I have a, 15 year old daughter. My my kids both had birthdays last week. I have a 15 year old daughter and a seven year old son. And parenthood in and of itself carries a lot of anxiety, just assuring the baby into the world and making sure that they stay alive.
Tamika Thompson:You know?
Jennifer Barone:Just the day to day.
Tamika Thompson:Just the day to day caregiving, making sure that you remove all obstacles and dangers. And so that in and of itself has the potential to be horrific. Mhmm. Motherhood for marginalized people in this country carries an additional burden. Mhmm.
Tamika Thompson:It carries a burden of making sure that you prepare your children for how society is going to treat them or very likely will treat them, giving them the tools to be able to to play their part in in the progress that we need to make and to play their part resistance because we all have a part in it. And and and I very much see my role as a black mother of making sure that my kids are aware from a very young age of of what the reality is. I I wanna make sure that they always know what time it is. Yeah. And that's the way that it was taught to me and that my role is to pass that on, but also to keep them safe.
Tamika Thompson:And that's really hard to do in America.
Jennifer Barone:Mhmm.
Tamika Thompson:And Nona is is painfully aware of that. And so the Harlan character, is her nephew, who was a journalist in the book, very much mirrors the research that I did when I was preparing for that documentary that turned into this book. I spoke to experts at the CDC. Mhmm. I spoke to survivors of gun violence.
Tamika Thompson:I spoke to mothers who had lost children. And what Harlan discovers in the book mirrors what I was discovering is that, you know, school shooters, mass shooters, so called gangs, so called inner city shootings, all are part of the same major issue that we have here, and that it's a it's a public health crisis. Yeah. And it was declared a public health crisis by The US surgeon general multiple times, in the past and most recently in 2024. And we're looking at about fifty thousand people killed every year in this country Yeah.
Tamika Thompson:Because of guns. And it's not it's not necessarily changing. It's it's gotten worse in the in the decade or so that I've been looking at it. It used to be back then that gun violence was the second leading cause of death for young people, but it's now the first. It has overtaken car accidents and cancer.
Tamika Thompson:And that's the underpin... Underpinning of the book, but also of her fear because she knows that they are always in danger and her boys are always in danger and that she can't discount anything, that she has to remain hypervigilant. And I think that hypervigilance is definitely something that I experience having grown up in a in a tough neighborhood, but also, you know, I I no longer live in a in a tough neighborhood. I'm raising my kids in in, you know, in relative comfort compared to what I grew up in, but the perils are still there.
Jennifer Barone:Mhmm. PTSD against experiencing violence like that, especially from a very young age, seems like a haunting, as you mentioned earlier. It's making me wonder through this lens of heart, is there a healing process that can happen either through writing it, through people experiencing this, through this kind of fantasy story? But what is the other side of fear that comes through this process for you?
Tamika Thompson:I... It... It's been healing for me to to write it. I will definitely say that. I think it's I think it's healing to talk about it, and I recently got a a DM from someone on social media who read this book, like, in the last couple of weeks, and she said that she had also lost someone to gun violence.
Tamika Thompson:And the way that Nona talks about her loss very much mirrors what she experienced, and I think there was some healing in that. And I connected with her around that because I know what that feels like. And I always wondered when I was growing up how my grandmother absorbed the loss of my uncle. Right. And I often wonder how my family has absorbed the loss of so many things.
Tamika Thompson:Mhmm. My mother... You know, the the setting here, Hester Gardens is a public housing project. My mother, when she was young, lived in a Detroit public housing project called the Jeffries Project, and about a mile from my childhood home was a public housing project called Hermann Gardens where we had family members and friends, and we would go there sometimes for parties or to to get together with people. And there was always this lure around the place that it was haunted, And it it very much, is an inspiration for Hester Gardens as is Cabrini Green and the Marcy projects in New York and the Queensbridge project, which I did research on.
Tamika Thompson:But I I just think that when we talk about these things and we have conversations around them and we don't hide them and we don't push them under the rug, that there is healing in that. But but what I want beyond healing is for there to be a national conversation about what we want in this country. Mhmm. Do we wanna keep living like this? Do we want to remain at risk all the time?
Tamika Thompson:One of the one of the things that that came up in this book is that Marcus, is set to go to Brown University. And we all know that in December, there was a shooting at at Brown University, a mass shooting. And it it interrupted the flow of the production of this because there was a moment where we... Where I thought we need to pull those references from the book Mhmm. And that, you know, I wouldn't want to trigger anyone, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I had put it in here for for that reason.
Tamika Thompson:But after spending some time thinking about it and reflecting, and it was going to stop the production of the book if we had pulled it, I thought, no. This was... This is the point. This is the point, as I'm supposed to be talking about this. I'm supposed to be bringing this up.
Tamika Thompson:We live in a country where gun violence is so pervasive that I could have put any location in this book, and with enough time, someone was gonna shoot it up.
Jennifer Barone:I feel like we are hearing in the news, like, every day about mass shootings. It's almost to the point where people are becoming just desensitized to to even hearing it. It just seems like normalized in a way. What do you think, you know, about bringing this genre onto on... You know, as a layer onto it that can reinvigorate this topic as a as a topic of conversation?
Tamika Thompson:One of the things that I wanted... One of my goals for this was to raise the question of why the gunman, and I and I definitely use the word gunman man because we're looking at about 70 to 80% is, you know, male centered in in gun violence in this country. Why is the gunman not a more common villain in horror? Guns typically in our popular culture, guns are the moment where the characters are being saved, particularly in our action films. When the gun shows up, it's to protect.
Tamika Thompson:It's to fix everything. Right? Even in the slasher movie Halloween, the moment at the end where doctor Loomis shows up to save Laurie Strode, he comes with a gun. Interesting call out. Right?
Tamika Thompson:And
Jennifer Barone:I know thought about that.
Tamika Thompson:Right? It's like the the gun is the thing that that saves her from this monster. Mhmm. And for a lot of people in this country, the gun is not the savior. Right?
Tamika Thompson:Mhmm. We have some of the highest gun ownership rates of comparable countries across the world, and our second amendment has set it up that every citizen has the potential to be a soldier. And we have glorified the gunman in our culture. Mhmm. But it's a very specific type of gunman.
Tamika Thompson:It it has to be a gunman that comes from the dominant culture. Can be a black man. It can be a black man because police are shooting black men when they even suspect that they have a gun, and many of them are unarmed. Mhmm. And so those are the questions that I wanted to raise with this.
Tamika Thompson:Those are the things that I think we have not really reached consensus on. And I thought when first graders were shot to death in Newton, Connecticut back in 2012, I believe it was, that we were going to have that national conversation because I thought to myself, surely, first graders, that's where we're gonna draw the line. That's when we're gonna have the conversation. And it began, but everyone became polarized, and we didn't reach consist... Consensus.
Tamika Thompson:And I don't know what it's going to take, but I know that we have to keep talking about it, and we have to we have to make it a priority Mhmm. For our young people in particular because they're the ones that are suffering the most in this. So
Jennifer Barone:you're using supernatural elements, like the concept of a curse. Was there an element of superstition when you were growing up that came into this? And then I think you're also using this metaphor of the curse to talk about, you know, that we're all sort of under this national curse of gun violence and and the psychological underpinnings of where that's coming from. Can you talk a little bit about that too?
Tamika Thompson:Spoiler alert, the curse is America. The curse is America. Right? And when I was growing up, there was a sense that there was a spirit to evil. And and and and my family would even call people evil if they showed up with a bad mood.
Tamika Thompson:They'd be like, oh, they're so and so. She's evil today. There was this idea that there was some spiritual evil or force that existed. And and and I can even hear my mother saying it today. You know, I'll I'll say something to her, she'd be like, oh, you know, that's just the devil.
Tamika Thompson:You know, there's just this spirit that is kind of there. Mhmm. And there was a lot in my family, particularly my family in the South. There was this idea that the spirits are just there. The ancestors are just there walking amongst us.
Tamika Thompson:Mhmm. And there, you know, there were these tools that they had in my family of of driving out these spirits. That's where so much of the, you know, the the conjure the conjure woman that's in the book... That appears in the book, and she's got her own specific way of doing things very much grew out of my family. You know, there was blessing oil for everything.
Tamika Thompson:You know? There was something something has hurt on you. Oh, you know, I gotta remedy. It wasn't... They didn't go to the pharmacy and get...
Tamika Thompson:So, you know, it it would be like blessing oil or my my grandmother in in Southern Alabama, she would have these cloths that had this special oil, and she wasn't getting it at church. You know? And she would come in, and she would she would put that on me. They were they were very into laying hands. Laying hands on someone that the hand could heal Mhmm.
Tamika Thompson:Or that the the force, the faith, the spirit could heal. And so all of those things went into these spiritual aspects in the book, but Nona is wrestling with spirituality versus religion, versus formal religion and a very Christian mega church religion that is preying upon her and the other residents of Hester Gardens that I thought it was really important to show how expensive it is to be poor, that even the place that you're going to for respite and for support and for community is extracting from you tithes and offerings that you really don't have. Mhmm. And it is showing up at the church in these, you know, plasma screen televisions and the Mercedes and the, you know, the the fancy office digs. And so she's she's grappling with all of these things, and I think that there's definitely the idea of forces, evil evil versus good forces within within my family and definitely within the characters in the book.
Tamika Thompson:Mhmm.
Jennifer Barone:What... I was wondering, like, what can fear, like, teach us about courage? And I also love... There's a line. I hope I'm not giving anything away.
Jennifer Barone:But at the end, there's a beautiful line that you have that, what if this curse is asking for peace? Right? And it's like, what... Maybe this, you know, violence that's coming through is hopefully going to lead us to a peaceful place. But you talk about that polarity bless you between facing fear head on, as you mentioned, being prepared to as your family prepared you to courageously face life, and, you know, maybe leading toward peace even though we're having to go through this really violent struggle that we're in right now?
Tamika Thompson:There's hope in the book. I don't want people to think that it's it's so... I mean, it is dark and depressing and devastating, but there is hope, and the hope really lies in community, and it lies in faith and not faith in the megachurch, but faith within the spirit and the strength that lies within the person that Nona is spending the book discovering because she she doesn't have it in great supply in the beginning. And there is the idea that that fear is holding her back, but the freedom comes from letting go of that fear. The hope is in the love that she has for the other women in the community.
Tamika Thompson:And letting go of the ideas, that she has around labels and who she is supposed to be and looking outward for strength and instead looking inside herself. I don't wanna give too much away about her journey, but it's when she begins to look within herself that I think that's where the hope comes from in the story.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. There's so much about place that's important in this book. You talked a little bit about Michigan and choosing Michigan as a connection to your family. I actually happen to, like, Google, where is Hester Gardens? And I happen to come upon one that was, like, somewhere in the South Bay, actually.
Jennifer Barone:But Hester Gardens is a is a fictional place. I just wanna share that. But, yeah, can you talk about maybe the parallels too? Because this issue is national. Right?
Jennifer Barone:But also, it could hit home for a lot of people who live in the Bay Area, and obviously, we all do. But can you talk about the difference between Michigan, the national level, and the importance of place and how that might connect here too?
Tamika Thompson:I think I think the the the through line in this for me about place was that you could take this story and put it in any community, and it could still be told the same way. I I think that I had very specific things that I wanted to say about segregation, continued segregation in this in this country and economic oppression. But this story could have been told in a in a rural town. It could have been told in suburbia. It could have been told, even in a in a middle class or upper middle class neighborhood.
Tamika Thompson:And the reason is is, as I mentioned, the the mass shootings and the school shootings and the the shooter in many of these cases, and this is the discovery that I had in the research, is that they really are impacted by the same thing in this country. It doesn't matter if they're middle class, if they are suburban, it doesn't matter what their socioeconomic background is. The one characteristic that they all share is before they pick up a gun, at some point, they were traumatized. Mhmm. And and it was violent.
Tamika Thompson:And, usually, it was abuse or they they witnessed someone who was close to them being abused. They were brutalized by the police. They were beaten. They were bullied. There was some trauma that preceded them picking up a gun.
Tamika Thompson:And so I chose the setting because the setting was within me. The setting, I knew very well. Medford, the fictional town, is a cross between Detroit and Flint, Michigan Mhmm. Which if you've paid attention in the last, like, you know, twenty or thirty years, yeah, you know that there that there are there are forces that have worked against the people who live in those places. And and I had things I wanted to say about that, but I very much feel that the young men who are in here in this story are...
Tamika Thompson:Would be the same no matter where I placed them. I could have placed them in Oakland. I could have placed them in, you know, Walnut Creek, honestly. And so I told the story that was closest to me because I knew that in the telling of it, there would be so much emotional depth.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah.
Tamika Thompson:I cried as I wrote it and I've heard from some people that they've cried as they've read it. And I think I think a lot of that is tied to place.
Jennifer Barone:Mhmm. What is... Tell me a little bit about your process now. Are there places in the Bay Area that you find inspiring, whether that be for this type of genre or other work that hopefully you'll give us a little hint as where you're going next. But are there also, like, groups, like writing groups or places that you go to for support and inform...
Jennifer Barone:And inspiration on this path, this journey that you're on?
Tamika Thompson:This is gonna sound... I actually don't know how this is gonna sound, but I periodically have to take riding retreats because I am so busy with my children all the time, with my my husband and my mom. And just in the day to day that I need to get away and take breaks sometimes just to have, like, an entire weekend to revise or to work on something. And so I go to Bodega Bay. Alright.
Tamika Thompson:And Bodega Bay is the setting for, the birds, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Mhmm. And there's something about being there. And I don't know if it's just because I love that movie and I love, you know, I love the book. And the...
Tamika Thompson:You know, I love looking at the birds when I'm there. I don't know what it is, but there's something that's very liberating when I go there that I feel like I can just dive into the story. But there's something... I wouldn't call it creepy, but there's something that feels otherworldly or surreal about being there. Mhmm.
Tamika Thompson:And I and I really love to write there. And and that's my little that's my little treat for myself. I don't do it often because it's expensive to go get a plane and stay for an entire weekend, but when I do it, I feel like the revision... Because usually when I'm revising, I feel like the revision just blows when I'm there.
Jennifer Barone:That's good. So you you seem to need like a private space away from everyday life to really focus. Are there other like support systems that you had in publishing this book that were kind of around you giving you a boost or was it a lonely process?
Tamika Thompson:I think the drafting is is lonely. I... When I need community, I have the Horror Writers Association, specifically the SFA chapter, and I'm so happy that some members are are here present with me tonight because I feel that energy and that support, and I need that. Mhmm. And so I definitely go to them when I have questions, I need support, or I need community.
Tamika Thompson:But in my day to day writing practice, it's just me. I set aside time every day to write and to revise, and, I guard that time, and I let people know that this is my writing time. Don't come in the, you know, the office. I close the doors, and I, you know, I make sure that I have that space to myself. And I also carry my practice with me, so I have an app on my phone that when something comes to me or inspiration is there, I can kinda jot it down wherever I am.
Tamika Thompson:I still work on short stories. I am not the type of person who believes that, you know, you abandon short stories because you're doing longer work. I think short stories might actually be my first love. And so I still very much have short stories in my in my practice as well, but I do... I'm a practicing artist and I have to do that every day.
Jennifer Barone:So are... Is your next... So you told me you're working on a future French genres perhaps. Yes. Maybe you can share a little bit without giving much away.
Jennifer Barone:But are you gonna continue working in the horror genre, or will you branch off into, like, a different genre?
Tamika Thompson:I love horror. I think just because I have consumed it since I was very young, I, you know, I watched slasher movies and horror movies from a very young age, and I read scary stories to tell in the dark and all of those, you know, the the horror literature that we read as kids, I definitely consumed it. And so it's one of the reasons why, you know, the first organization I joined was the Horror Writers Association because I believe in the genre and I love it. And, you know, I may do subgenres, but there will always be some... Something that is horrific or suspenseful, I think, in my work.
Tamika Thompson:I am... It's it's it's so interesting talking about this book and being on tour for it because I am actually, in my day to day practice, not anywhere in this world. I am working on my second novel, which is a complete departure from this. It is still horror, but the cast of characters are very different. The setting is the setting is Southern California.
Tamika Thompson:So it's... You know, and it's and it's like a beach town. It is not this at all. And so I'm having a lot of fun working on that. It's it's not as heavy at this.
Tamika Thompson:It's still a social horror because I think I will probably always write social horror, but it's tackling a different societal ill. Okay. And I'm just... I'm really enjoying that. I also have a novella that has just kind of been in the background that I'm finally coming around to again, and I have, had enough short stories published since my previous collection to put out a new short story collection.
Tamika Thompson:So I'm kinda doing all of those things at the same time while I'm out talking about this one.
Jennifer Barone:Well, for our closing question, I wanna ask you, what do you think that your readers and the audience can learn from fear?
Tamika Thompson:From fear. I think fear, fear teaches us a lot about what is important to us. I think where we get into trouble is we let the fear guide us and guide our actions. And what I have learned over time because I I I had to heal from my trauma and my hypervigilance, and it's an it's an ongoing journey, is to be curious about the fear and to analyze it and understand what it's telling you about your desires and your hopes and your dreams and what you want and to use that information to guide your actions, but not the fear itself.
Jennifer Barone:Excellent. Thank you so much for that. It's been such a pleasure to get to hear about your process, to get to hear about the Curse of Hester Gardens. Thank you for presenting that to us. So I just want to, for our sign off for our podcast, for listeners who'd like to learn more about Tamika Thompson and The Curse of Hester Gardens, go and visit tamikathompson.com.
Jennifer Barone:And she also has an event on, Wednesday, April 15. Do you wanna share a little bit about that next event?
Tamika Thompson:Yes. Yes. So accessibility is important to me. I have suffered hearing loss, and I have a hearing aid. And it's important to me to have virtual events throughout this book tour for people who maybe are not able or are are not interested in going to an in person event.
Tamika Thompson:So on Wednesday night, I will be joining Sistasci Fi's wind down Wednesday on Instagram live in the evening. And so of this information is available on my website, but I hope people will tune into that as well, as well as this podcast Yes. So that they can experience, you know, this talk and also learn about the book, from the comfort of their home.
Jennifer Barone:Go out and get yourself a copy of The Curse of Hester Gardens from Tamika Thompson or find it at your local independent bookstore, including Telegraph Hill Books. Thank you, Tamika.
Tamika Thompson:Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much to Telegraph Hill Books for holding space for me this evening.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. So we'd like to thank you everybody for being here, and I'd love to, if you have questions for Tamika, just open up the room, for questions...
Jennifer Barone:This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow, subscribe, and leave us a review.
Jennifer Barone:Visit tellhighlit.org to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and more. Consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you are a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@tellhighlit.org. Thanks again for tuning in.
Jennifer Barone:I'm Jennifer Barone along with Joseph Carboni at Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature. And this has been Voices from the Hill. Until next time, keep reading, keep writing, stay inspired, and come visit us at Telegraph Hill Books in North Beach, San Francisco.