Emily Raboteau

Oh man. No. I don't even know what to say here. This after the last story in the collection had me pulling my hair. There was too much going on and I loathed the main character, Reginald. I think Raboteau was dunking on hoteps with this short story, but it just didn't grip me at all. Also if you want to know about hoteps, please go Google that. I am not energetic enough today to talk about the never ending messiness in the African American community. Let's just say that Raboteau did a great show more job with it and Reginald sucked.

"The Tangled Woods" follows college professor Reginald Wright (eyeballs last name) who is angry at his life, his wife, and young son. Apparently he was attracted to his wife when she was "woke" but now questions who she is, what they are doing together, etc. on their way to a family vacation to the Poconos. We are quickly given insights into the real Reginald and then the ending comes along with a thunk that did not work at all.

So there's not much there I have to say with this. Raboteau starts to pull the layers away from Reginald and you realize he's crap. And you wonder how much his wife knows/gets. And there are some hints there even with his son. But then things swerve into some thing about Make America Great Again or something (I started to roll my eyes so hard I couldn't focus) and it just didn't land where I think she wanted this to. And though I gave the one story a pass on not really being horror (since it's told via a young boy and how his and his friends imaginations work) I can't on this one. It's not really horror. It's just Reginald doing dumb things repeatedly and I don't think catching a clue about them and someone someone gets beaten up. I don't know. I was glad to move on after completing this one. show less

An American middle-aged man discovers the horrors within himself while on a resort vacation with his family in this short story by Emily Raboteau. The Tangled Woods is the fifth story in the Dark Corners Collection, an Amazon/Audible original series of horror stories by bestselling authors. Each story in this collection is creative and different. These ain't your mama's Halloween tales. While some of the horror elements in each might seem a bit over-used at first, each writer put their own show more spin on it and made it their own. In the end the stories aren't really scary, but horrifying in other ways. Sometimes reality is far more frightening than made up monsters.

Reginald Wright, a film critic, is the main character in this story. He expects to experience everything that is wrong with America on this trip to an over-priced resort with his kids and wife....and he does. But he also discovers that he just might be part of the problem. I loved how his self revelation was wound around a backdrop of very dark imagery. Some of us only see the bad in others....but never in ourselves. Raboteau rips off Reginald Wright's blinders and shows him......himself. Wouldn't that be truly horrifying for every one of us? Imagine if we suddenly saw ourselves as we really are.....not how we imagine that we are. Eek!

Great story. Not really scary or horrifying, but very thought provoking. I identified with the characters as they spent time at the resort doing all those tourist trap things. That really pulled me into the story because my own family has spent time at similar resorts and looked at other kids and parents behaving badly. And, as we all do, we ignored our own faults, choosing to raise an eyebrow at the bad behavior of others. Again.... eeeek!

There are a total of seven stories in the Dark Corners Collection. I'm reviewing them all separately because they are by different authors, most new to me. Emily Raboteau is the author of several other books and short stories, most dealing with race issues. After enjoying this story, I'm definitely going to read more by this author. Her themes are hard-hitting -- this story really struck home with me. I see that this story has some low ratings on Goodreads -- perhaps the topic really hit home with others as well, in an uncomfortably raw and truthful way?? Or perhaps we are all getting tired of racial, political and social commentary because we feel powerless to scrape the shit off ourselves and fix things? Yes, the main character is detestable, immoral and a complete narcissist. But -- in today's world, aren't we all at least a bit that way ourselves? Aren't we all part of the problem? Just some thoughts.....

The audio book, narrated by JD Jackson, is just over an hour long. Jackson has a nice, easily understandable voice and read at an even pace. All in all, an emotional story rather than a scary one. The audio provided a nice listening experience, even though the truth behind the story was disturbing. show less

I read this short story on Amazon Prime in the Dark Corners collection. It wasn't one of the strongest stories in the collection. Everyone in it seemed intentionally written to be annoying and awful, and the one moment in the book that gave me hope for the story as a whole turned out to be a dream instead of reality. It was also confusing at times, trying to keep track of exactly what was happening, although in a way that worked in the context of this story.

This fascinating and powerful memoir took me to places I didn't know I wanted to go and considered questions I didn't know I had. When author Emily Raboteau visits her lifelong best friend at her new home in Israel it sets Raboteau off on a ten year quest to find a homeland of her own. With a black father and white mother giving her an appearance that made it difficult for people to classify her, Raboteau often had the sense that she didn't fit in anywhere. She became intrigued with the idea show more of a black Zion, or homeland, and that led her first back to Israel to visit the Beta Israelis, Jews from Ethiopia with a long religious tradition who are renamed and re-educated when they immigrate to Israel, and also a community of African American Israelis who have lived for decades in the Negev Desert .

After that she travels to Jamaica to understand more about the culture and beliefs of Rastafarians, Ethiopia to see the settlement created there by Jamaican transplants who are convinced Ethiopia is their promised land, and Ghana to talk to African Americans who relocated there seeking connection with the continent of their ancestors. Raboteau is deeply curious about these peoples, why they moved where they did and how they feel about it now, and this book provides a mesmerizing inside look at their subcultures. She treats everyone she meets with sincere respect, but doesn't gloss over or ignore their shortcomings and inconsistencies--for instance in Ethiopia it's the Jamaicans who are colonizers and they don't always treat the locals well, in spite of their own experience of colonization.

The book ends with Raboteau visiting her Hurricane Katrina displaced relatives in the American South, where she tours sites of the Civil Rights Movement and again considers questions of what makes a home. I learned a lot reading this book, and enjoyed the journey immensely. As an added bonus, Raboteau has a wonderful way with words, deftly picking out details to set a scene or describe the many people she met in her travels show less