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Questions about Zombies: Living with Xavier Riddles while reading Colson Whitehead’s ‘Zone One’
(What’s real?) Are zombies real?
My daughters ask this simple yes or no question not realizing they have invited their father to regurgitate a lecture triangulating the dynamics among Haitian culture, the historical institution of slavery, and the foundation of New World horror.
Sinewy strands of grilled cheese hammock between their lips and fingertips. I have infected them with either obsessed passion or calloused indifference. They either want brains or are numb to the world around them. I have waited their whole lives for this conversation.
Why are they asking me about zombies? From what I gather some kid at school thought it would be fun to play Zombie on the playground, and life being all fun and brains, we end this idyllic scene in the only plausible way: by playing Zombie in the backyard.
What’s that book about? they ask me, and I tell them in one word, Zombies.
I am reading Colson Whitehead’s Zone One so I am not lying to them, which makes answering the next question even easier. Is that true?
And now that we have established over a series of days that Zombie(s) is a game for the playground and the subject matter for a book dads read zombies are now…
