Christina James says she doesn’t read to feel good.
“I want to feel like I survived,” she says.
James, 34, is a readers’ services assistant at the Lawrence Public Library and has worked there since 2021. A self-proclaimed horror enthusiast, her speciality extends to thriller and suspense.
She got her start on the dark side with “Goosebumps” books — but she had to tread carefully, devouring pages while tucked between the bookshelves in her local library.
Originally from Independence, Missouri, James graduated from the University of Kansas in 2013. There she met her husband and best friend, and the pair decided to stay and put roots in Lawrence.
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Growing up in a religious household that stigmatized the horror genre only drove James’ fascination with it. She watched scary movies and TV shows, such as “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” and read “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales” and more classics when her parents weren’t home.
“I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween as a kid, so that became my villain origin story,” she says.
More than ghosts and jumpscares, horror can challenge the audience to confront hard and often uncomfortable truths.
“Rosemary’s Baby” is an allegory of women’s bodily autonomy, James says. One of her favorite Indigenous authors, Stephen Graham Jones, explores the trauma of colonization in his works.
“It is a genre that is spawned from our environment, our cultural environment, our spiritual beliefs, our political environment, and the different ways that we survive,” James says. “I just feel like it serves as sort of a hopeful genre and a warning at the same time. People don’t realize that horror does a lot of heavy lifting that other genres don’t always do.”
James says she also connects with horror’s ability to honor feminine rage. Reading fiction about women with tragic endings written by men made her think, “Look, I love this, but this could be so much better if a woman of color wrote it — and the protagonist had a knife.”
“I like that, at least in horror films, angry Black women get to be rightfully angry. And that in and of itself is cathartic,” James says.
Like all staff in the readers’ services department at the library, James is essentially a matchmaker of people and books. She helps readers interested in the genre find their niche, from vast cultural representations to levels of gore.
“It is the best job in the world, in my opinion,” James says.
Visit James at the Readers’ Book Help Desk at the library, 707 Vermont St., where in her role she also curates displays, shelves books and facilitates programming.
Additionally, staff members contribute to the library’s online blog aimed at circulating the catalog. James’ most recent blog post this month dissects her recommended psychological horror fiction.
People can also engage with James and the horror community she’s built through her dedicated Instagram page, @the_wandering_reader.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
