Following mentions in New Books Tuesday and Podcast Wednesday, Justina Ireland's Dread Nation, which I just finished reading, takes center stage here on the blog.
This most recent tide of racism overwhelming much of the world has triggered many responses, on many levels. Protests, and activists and political action. And it has spurred artistic responses. In the US, black artists have created some of the most powerful. The film Get Out and the novels The Hate U Give and An Unkindness of Ghosts have all approached the US's past and present in impactful ways.
Justina Ireland's Dread Nation, released earlier this week, is an outstanding addition to this new canon. It is an alternate history YA novel, where the course of the American Civil War was disrupted by a massive zombie uprising. Now, 17 years later, much of the battle against the zombies is handled by former black slaves and their children.
Jane McKeene, the novel's protagonist, is one such child. Born just before the uprising, the black child of a white family, Jane was sent at 14 to a school for young black women where they learn to fight the undead so they can take a position as attendants of white women. Slavery was abolished as part of the settlement to end the war and fight the zombies, but reconstruction was also skipped over.
As Jane's graduation grows near, she is drawn into the events happening around the city of Baltimore, supposedly clear of zombies (called "shamblers" in the novel), where entire families seem to disappear. Investigating this will lead her to a very different and dark place.
This novel is steeped in historical truth and present resonances, as it tackles, by way of zombies and society's response to them, some of the very darkest aspects of the US' past and present. Jane is a wonderful protagonist and storyteller, and her story, told in first person narrative form interspersed with letters to her mother and also other correspondence I won't spoil, is a remarkable one.
When I post this review to Goodreads, I will be giving this novel 5 out of 5 stars.