They have incredible memories and are masters at imitation, which lend to their excellence in painting, music, singing and, of course, writing. One of the most memorable traits of Rice’s vampires is that they are overtly brooding, sensual and emotional and prone to dwell on aesthetic.

However, like Dracula, sunlight and flames burn their skin and, if they are trapped in it, they burn up and disintegrate into a fine dust. Her vampires differ from the pre-established Dracula trope in that they are unaffected by crucifixes, garlic and stakes through the heart. They never age, and if one cuts their hair, it simply grows back in seconds to exactly match its previous state. Their nails are long and manicured, looking more like glass than fingernails. Her vampires are statue-like in appearance, with white, almost translucent skin that gains color if the vampire has recently fed. Their physical features are enhanced with a preternatural air to the individual’s fullest aesthetic potential without changing their physiognomy completely, and they remain in that heightened stage for their eternity. She practically invented the brooding, sexy vampire trope that “Twilight” and “The Vampire Diaries” capitalize so heavily on. Rice’s vampires are a metaphor for lost souls.

I drank Rice’s work down slowly, savoring the enchanting world that she creates out of New Orleans 1790s and 1920s, Paris in the 1700s, San Francisco in the 1980s and back as far as ancient Egypt. My public library card was my ticket out of my shockingly ordinary reality and into the gothic, horror-filled fantasies of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, each more exciting than the last. Growing up in suburban New Jersey amid toxic masculinity and avid white privilege, I found my escape from the unsavory opinions of my peers with my nose in any book I could get my hands on.

The vampire chronicles