Stacey Lee on Gothic Fiction and YA Books That Make You Sit with Discomfort

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Author photo by Aaron Blumenshine

The Gothic I Tried Not to Write by Stacey Lee

I never meant to write a gothic.

In fact, if you’d asked me at any point in my life whether I considered myself a gothic person, I would have said absolutely not—probably with the same energy I use when a friend suggests a horror movie. Growing up, I’d read all the classics: Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, The Fall of the House of Usher. I respected them, sure. But did I enjoy sleeping with the lights on afterward? Absolutely not. I was always more Young Frankenstein than Frankenstein: give me jokes, give me charm, give me anything other than the feeling of a cold draft on the back of my neck.

I’m also extremely suggestible. If I watch something scary, it sets up long-term residence in my imagination. Weeks later, I’ll be brushing my teeth and suddenly remember a shadowy hallway scene I should never have watched. That alone felt like proof I was not destined for gothic territory.

But then one day, I had an idea.

It crept in quietly: a mystery girl, a wealthy benefactor, a lonely island, an unexpected inheritance—and then the unbearable image that refused to leave, a dead body. The idea felt juicy and atmospheric, a little dangerous, and honestly a little rude for not letting me sleep. Still, I told myself it wasn’t gothic. It was… ambiance. With murder.

When I told my agent, she listened and said, very matter-of-factly, “Oh, you’re writing a gothic.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m doing what now?”

She ticked off the evidence: island, house, secrets, dread. I denied it all. But she was right. So I decided to lean in.

It wasn’t that I disliked the gothic. I just disliked how it made me feel: uncomfortable, unsettled, as if someone had whispered my name in a dark hallway. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the gothic isn’t necessarily about ghosts. It’s about pressure—feeling watched or boxed into a space you can’t quite escape.

And that part, I recognized immediately.

As a Chinese girl growing up in America, I understood confinement intimately. Not the supernatural kind—though sometimes it felt close—but the social kind. I was one of the only Chinese kids in my elementary school, which meant I attracted an amount of attention I absolutely did not want. I fielded a daily barrage of questions that ranged from culturally confused to creatively racist: Why was my face so flat? Could I speak Chinese on command? Did I, perhaps, say “Ching Chong” at home? (For the record, I didn’t know a single word of Chinese, which disappointed my classmates almost as much as it relieved me.)

Really, I just wanted to be as unnoticed as possible. Not easy when everyone insists on noticing you.

So I became the child who sat by the classroom door at recess because the playground felt too loud, too unpredictable, too full of kids who seemed terrifyingly confident in a world where I didn’t feel protected. I thought I was afraid of noise. Now I think I was afraid of stepping into spaces where I already sensed I didn’t belong.

I got more comfortable moving through the world as I grew older, but certain constraints don’t vanish—they just shift. Expectations about how women should behave or how much space we’re allowed to take up linger long after childhood ends.

Which is why, I think, teens connect so deeply to gothic stories. Adolescence is one big shadowy mansion: parts of your life are locked away from you, adults are watching, and the rules feel arbitrary. You’re supposed to find yourself while staying firmly within a boundary someone else drew. The gothic simply makes that atmosphere literal.

So maybe I didn’t set out to write a gothic. Maybe I didn’t even think I liked them. But as I wrote Heiress of Nowhere, I realized the genre had been living in me all along. The unease I’d avoided was the same unease I’d grown up carrying. Writing into it—into the quiet, the uncertainty, the claustrophobia—felt unexpectedly freeing.

Books That Make Us Sit With Discomfort

These YA stories echo the emotional pressure at the heart of the gothic—characters navigating worlds that hem them in, press on their choices, or demand they shrink themselves to survive.

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Stacey Lee is the New York Times bestselling author of historical young adult fiction, including The Downstairs Girl, a Reese’s Book Pick; Luck of the Titanic, which received five starred reviews; and Outrun the Moon, winner of the Asian Pacific Award for Literature. A native of southern California and fourth-generation Chinese American, she is a founder of the We Need Diverse Books movement and writes stories for all kids (even the ones who look like adults).

This piece is part of an ongoing series that invites YA authors to talk about their latest books within the context of varying genres, styles, and themes throughout young adult literature more broadly. You can read Ryan Douglass’s piece on YA adaptations inspired by classics, as well as Carolina Ixta’s piece on teen activism.