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23 - Native American Horror, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction

from Part IV - Visions and Revisions: 21st-Century Prospects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Eric Gary Anderson
Edited by
Melanie Benson Taylor
Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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Summary

From the uncanny werewolf families and zombie border patrol guards in the novels of Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet) to the digital citizens and virtually-enhanced tourists in Cherokee writer Blake Hausman's novel Riding the Trail of Tears, Native Americans are creating strange and scintillating new worlds of unforeseen horrors and possibilities. Such works engage the popular genres of horror and fantasy in order to mobilize sophisticated political critiques of capitalism, globalization, and the colonial imbrications of Indigenous peoples, albeit in surprising, genre-bending forms. This chapter explores the features of this new and vibrant field, offering readings of some of its most provocative titles and suggesting ways that such works can help critics and readers chart fresh, productive pathways into both the histories and the futures of North American Indigenous populations. In the very act of strengthening and deepening the connections between the speculative and the real, Native writers craft methodologies of resistance.

Keywords

horrorfantasyspeculative fictionsupernatural fictiongenre fictionIndigenous undeadnessthe uncannythe digital uncannyTrail of Tears
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Native American Literature , pp. 431 - 446
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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