Daphne Fama’s gothic debut, House of Monstrous Women, is rich with Filipino folklore, female rage, ritual cannibalism, and matriarchal horror. It has been described as Silva Moreno-Garcia’s infamous novel Mexican Gothic — which this interviewer agrees solely based on the brilliant execution of the theme of generational trauma — meets the campy horror film Ready or Not, starring Samara Weaving.
When she’s not writing about monsters and the women who love them, she’s writing about video games or adoring her partner and pup. Her favorite horror games are the Fatal Frame series (minus Maiden of Black Water) and Silent Hill. She loves found footage and folklore drenched horror movies.
Fama’s social media is a celebration and dissection of Filipino folklore including the aswang — an umbrella term that refers to a wide array of monsters, from vampire-like creatures to shapeshifters. These entities became the key inspiration for House of Monstrous Women. You can find her on Instagram at @daphnefamawrites.
(Interview conducted by Haley Newlin)
CEMETERY DANCE: Why do you think gothic horror lends itself so well to the exploration of Filipino folktales in House of Monstrous Women?
DAPHNE FAMA: So much of Filipino folklore is tinged with the fear of colonizers, religious pressure, and a mistrust of women. It’s the perfect cocktail for a gothic horror. Aswang, for example, can be people who’ve turned away from God, who make pacts with demons. But more often, they’re beautiful young women or elderly widowed women. Women who exercise either power over men or an independence from them.
But it’s because they live outside of the bounds of expectations that they can really explore the meat of gothic horror: the repressed fears and desires. Desire for freedom, agency, the absolutely forbidden love of a childhood friend who might eat you.
How did you determine the types of monsters used in House of Monstrous Women? Which came first, the aswang or the human monsters, when developing the story?
Oh, the aswang, absolutely. When it comes to Filipino monsters, there’s none more famous than the aswang. I knew that I wanted to write a story about the People Power Revolution and the hopeful fight for freedom, which naturally paired with my complicated feelings about generational trauma. The aswang 
is a wonderful metaphor for this.
In the Visayan region, aswangs have a cursed bloodline. It’s a curse that is generally passed from mother to daughter, usually in the form of a cursed black object that must be vomited into the mouth of their inheritor. Failing to do this ends in an extremely painful death for those who refuse to continue the line. But by choosing to suffer and refusing to pass the cursed object on, you can end the curse permanently for those who come after you.
The suffering of the aswang mother, and the wound she inflicts on her daughter, has an irresistible draw. But more than that, I gravitated towards this feeling of expectation and conformity. If both the mother and daughter conform, they get to live lives as close to normal as possible. But if they push back, if they break the generational promise, they both suffer for it… and save everyone who comes after. It’s hope tinged with bitterness and pain, but still, it’s worth it.
You mention an element of generational trauma in the author’s note. Why do you think that is such an important theme to explore? Why was horror the proper landscape to do so?
Isn’t generational trauma a scar we all bear? It’s almost impossible to enter this world without the weight of your parents’ and grandparents’ suffering and expectations on your shoulders. That albatross can be suffocating. It can crack open your soul and rot it. For me, that was almost the case. I know I’m not alone in that.
I wanted to write a book where the main character, Josephine, is nearly crushed by the expectations of her family and society. But with sacrifice and determination she breaks the chains of generational trauma and carves from blood (much of it her own) the future she wants. More than that, I wanted others to see themselves in her suffering and success and know that they can achieve it too. I’m happy to say I did.
Horror is a wonderful genre to explore this. At its heart, horror is about transgressing boundaries. It’s about digging up all those repressed fears and truths. And with generational trauma, there’s so much to unpack and separate. The guilt, the expectations, the sense of obligation, the resentment and bitterness. They’re ugly thoughts and feelings that lend themselves to monsters and an atmosphere of suffocating dread.
You mention that you found yourself identifying with the aswang in high school. What did learning about the persecution of a woman in your mother’s village, accused of being an aswang, mean to you? How does it translate to House of Monstrous Women and its characters?
It meant everything. I was born already “othered” in my family. My father’s white and extremely conservative family didn’t believe in race mixing. My grandmother refused to acknowledge me. When I entered school, I was the only vaguely brown person in my small, rural school. I ate strange food, and my mother spoke with a thick accent. There were lots of reasons why I was an oddball of a kid, but immediately I was different, even though we watched the same shows and played the same games.
As I grew older and more cynical (like all teens, I suppose), I realized just how quick the world was to prejudice and judge others. My mother’s school friend, a young woman born into a family suspected of being aswang, was tormented by bullies. Her family was ostracized. Eventually, she and her family left town and changed their name, taking on completely new identities to try and start over. I hit a similar crossroad in life. I could run, make a new story, a new me, and try to leave it all behind… or I could lean into being the monster. A woman who doesn’t abide by the script and rules. Ultimately, I did both. I left home and my old life behind… and accepted myself for precisely who I am.
For that reason, I find Hiraya, a woman accused of being an aswang in House of Monstrous Women, to be particularly enchanting. At her core she’s a woman who doesn’t care what other people think, who’s unapologetically strange and herself. And she refuses to be confined in the little box life has prepared for her.
“Monstrous women” speaks to the history of persecuting, controlling, and condemning women. After writing House of Monstrous Women, what does the phrase mean to you? What do you hope it means to readers?
I’ll come clean: I never thought the women in House of Monstrous Women were monstrous at all. It’s just as your question states, someone’s “monstrosity,” their inhumanness, is completely defined by those observing them.
But if you look closer, if you drill into their hearts, you’ll see that what makes each of these women tick is something painfully human. A wish for freedom, a broken heart, the drive to break a vicious cycle. Something we can all relate to. I’d love the readers to put themselves in the shoes of the characters, to really think about what choices they would make if they had to live through those events. Would you really come out on the other side with clean hands? Or would you find blood smeared across your mouth?
You can catch Daphne Fama at “Read If You Dare: A Night Full of Horror” brought to you by Berkley and Exile In Bookville in Chicago, Illinois on Wednesday, October 15th. Fama will be accompanied by fellow horror authors Rachel Harssion, author of Such Sharp Teeth and Play Nice, Christina Henry, author of The House That Horror Built, and Nick Medina, author of The Whistler and Sisters of the Lost Nation.
The event begins at 7 p.m. CT and you can register here.
