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‘Lovecraft Country’ Disrupts the Mammy Caricature Trope
Jurnee Smollett shines in a role where she finally earns her worth
From portraying the lead in Eve’s Bayou at just age 10 to vampire freedom fighter Nicole Wright in True Blood to the enslaved Rosalee plotting her freedom in Underground, Jurnee Smollett has made a statement throughout her career. Her brand as smart, strong, beautiful, and capable carries over into her latest role as Leti Lewis in the new HBO series Lovecraft Country, which is essentially about trying to live and be free in Jim Crow America, with a few macabre twists.
Adapted from Matt Ruff’s 2016 fantasy horror novel of the same name, the original book counters fantasy icon H.P. Lovecraft’s insidious racism. Far from subtle, Lovecraft, who lived from 1890 to 1937, equated Black people to beasts in his 1912 poem “On the Creation of N***ers,” which is actually referenced in the show. Posthumously, his work became so influential that when award-winning fantasy writer Nnedi Okorafor, author of Who Fears Death, received her World Fantasy Award in 2011, Lovecraft’s head topped the statuette known as “The Howard.” Centering Black characters in a story filled with Lovecraftian signatures, such as grotesque monsters, secret societies, and ancient tomes, against a backdrop of human futility surely has its originator turning over in his grave. On top of that, the 2016 novel has been refashioned from a progressive White man’s vision to that of a Black woman, as the show is created by Misha Green, who also co-created the canceled-too-soon Underground.
From premise to execution, Lovecraft Country disrupts one of the most rampant Hollywood stereotypes of Jim Crow–era Black women: that of the maid. (See: The Help.) But there are no mammies to be found in Lovecraft Country. Here, Leti is a feisty renaissance woman who sings a little, dabbles in photography, and dares to buy a house in a White neighborhood. Her half-sister Ruby is a talented, bawdy musician. Hippolyta is a housewife — and a travel guidebook writer—as well as mother to young teen daughter Dee. Collectively, they offer four distinctive perspectives, from girlhood to womanhood, shedding insight into the spectrum of hopes, dreams, and temperaments of this era. It’s something rarely seen from Black women in other modern TV…
