Episode 1.6: ‘Ace of Spades’ by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
This week’s episode of ‘The Dark Academicals’ took us to an exclusive private school with an anonymous texter attempting to bring down the school’s only two black students with escalating methods of cruelty in Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s dark academia social thriller, ‘Ace of Spades’.
It’s a heck of a book, and we had some big topics to discuss.
In this episode our discussion included:
Whether the novel fits into our framework of dark academia
Institutional racism in society and it’s role in the plot
Homophobia and Devon’s experience as a gay black teenager
You can listen to it here:
If you fancy getting your hands on ‘Ace of Spades’ you can buy it from bookshop.org which both supports us as affliates, but also supports local bookshops!
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
(Full bibilography and show notes made available through Patreon)
‘Ace of Spades’ by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
‘Madam’ by Phoebe Wynne
‘The Great Gatsby’ by F Scott Fitzgerald
‘Catherine House’ by Elisabeth Thomas’
