Dread Nation had me hooked from the very first sentence:
The day I came squealing and squalling into the world was the first time someone tried to kill me. I guess it should have been obvious to everyone right then that I wasn't going to have a normal life.
Reading that, I knew that this was going to be a book like no other. Dread Nation is unique — who wouldn’t want to read a book about zombies in a Reconstruction-era America in which the Civil War has been derailed by the rising dead and a new world is emerging from the chaos?
Don't let nobody tell you any different about the old days. Life is hard now, nothing but suffering, but some kinds of suffering is easier to bear than others.
Life hasn’t always been kind to the protagonist, Jane McKeene. As a teenager, she is forced by the government to attend a combat school for black girls, where they are trained to be “Attendants” — bodyguards and chaperones who protect rich white women against zombies. Without giving any spoilers, let’s just say that one thing leads to another and Jane’s life is turned upside down, as she is once again sent away from everything she has ever known.
Author Justina Ireland was inspired to write Dread Nation after learning about Native American “re-education” schools and their role in the colonization of the US. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, Native American children were separated from their families and tribal communities and sent to boarding schools to be “civilized”. In these horrific institutions, they were often cruelly beaten, starved, and stripped of their identities and cultural practices. As Ireland explains in the novel’s afterword:
This exploitative school system became the basis for the fictional combat school system in the alternate historical timeline of Dread Nation. Because if "well-meaning" Americans could do such a thing to an already wholly subjugated community in a time of peace, what would they do in a time of desperation?
For such a layered narrative, the book has a really satisfying payoff. Jane encounters a wide variety of challenges, but often reminds the reader, “the problem in this world ain’t sinners, or even the dead. It is men who will step on anyone who stands in the way of their pursuit of power”. When not fighting off zombies — “shamblers”, as she calls them — she has to contend with the racist attitudes of the white people around her. Time and time again, we are shown that the real enemy is humans, and our selfish, ignorant, dangerous ways.
"Someday, if not today, you will see that this life is nothing without people to love."
Throughout the two books, Jane talks openly about her bisexuality, relating her “tumbles” with both boys and girls alike. The novel never uses the word “bisexual” (which was unknown at the time when it is set), but it is wonderful to see a depiction of a bi character, who dates both a man and a woman over the course of the story. As someone who has dated multiple people across the gender spectrum, it was refreshing to read about an experience that reflects my own. Since Jane’s two main relationships occur at very different stages in the plot (together, the books span 2–3 years), they both have room to blossom organically on the page. Both love interests complement Jane in different ways, and — crucially — she doesn’t try to compare them.
Ireland has a knack for creating meaningful intimate relationships between her characters, and perhaps none more so than that between Jane and Katherine.
—I’m going to kill [them]. All of them. I’m going to gut them like fish and use them as shambler bait, then I’m going to burn both the school and the mayor’s house to the ground and dance upon the ashes.
—That’s good, Jane, that’s good. It’s good to have goals.
It’s rare to see a bisexual romance explored on the page and even harder to find a narrative that is centered on the friendship, rather than the romance, between the two main characters. Jane and Katherine (the latter is an excellent example of asexual representation) begin the books as rivals, at best. Both are top-performing students at Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls. Jane mocks Katherine for her fashion sense and for her airs and graces, while Katherine criticizes Jane’s uncouth manners and rash behavior. They pair up to face the challenges of the world they find themselves in and slowly form a partnership, develop a grudging respect for each other, and finally become the most unlikely but brilliant friends. This provides a refreshing take on the enemies-to-friends trope, and a rare representation of a queer friendship based on the principle that opposites attract platonically, too. I loved it.
Dread Nation is a must-read for fans of The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, and for anyone in need of a good thriller with a sociopolitical edge. And while Dread Nation is amazing, the sequel Deathless Divide blows it out of the water. Packed with action, adventure, friendship, and kick-ass women, these are two unmissable books.
Comments
Facebook Comments