For centuries, zombies have been a hallmark of horror.
But one mythological origin is Haiti’s zonbi, a deceased person maliciously reanimated by a bokor, or sorcerer. Once bewitched, zonbis look like themselves but lack memories, agency, or awareness.
As U.S. troops occupied Haiti, the West spread more fearmongering narratives about Haitians as murderous zombie cannibals hunting whites. This projection onto colonized peoples remains today.
But fear of zombification and vanishing departed loved ones’ bodies belongs to our ancestors.
Once resurrected, zonbis serve their bokors and bokors’ paid clients, including on the fields. The zonbi is enslaved.
“It belongs to no group and is not a predator,” writes Africana professor Kaiama Glover. “It’s a lonely and long-suffering victim.” Zora Neale Hurston also wrote of the zonbi’s helplessness, a once loved and intelligent human reduced to a body, an “unthinking, unknowing beast.”
Still, our formerly enslaved ancestors’ mythology also speaks of a cure. If given salt, the zonbi’s stolen soul returns. They can finally rest. They are finally safe.
Just as much as the zonbi can be a metaphor for the ancestors’ fears of dehumanization and enslavement during and post-death, the zonbi’s liberation can be, too.
From incarceration to capitalism, the restored zonbi reminds us to liberate our bodies and souls from anti-Blackness and exploitation. Freedom is our future, in life and death.