“…the easiest lie to tell is the one people want to believe. She is constantly fighting on multiple fronts: against the expectations of white people around her, against her own impulses, and against the undead. Jane is imperfect but very much a delightful heroine. Jane goes so far as to carry a copy of Tom Sawyer in her pocket for part of the book. Her personality is very much like Tom Sawyer of Mark Twain’s work. She’s not “spunky,” but she does have spunk - energy, spark, dare, drive. I hesitate to call Jane “spunky” because of how typical that sounds. The irony of the intros is a fruitful literary technique used to perfect effect. They say so in the newspaper, and you know the paper would never lie.” - Ch 3 “I know you probably worry about the number of undead out here in the East, but Baltimore County is the safest in all the country. For example, here’s the opener from Chapter 3: Jane’s relationship with her mother is one of the backbones of the book, illustrated in the opening “letters” of each chapter, which establish Jane’s background and are often in stark, and ironic, contrast to the happenings of the chapter.
But all Jane really wants to do is get back to her momma in Kentucky. Jane McKeene is training to be an Attendant, that is a Black servant to a white woman, part bodyguard, part chaperone, part personal slave. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is really slavery under a different name. These new soldiers are then sent out to defend good white people. Slavery has been officially abolished, but in its place, there is now mandatory schooling for Negroes and Indians, where they are taught how to kill the undead. The Southern states have been overrun and the Northern states have shrunk to isolated walled cities. In the aftermath of the War, the United States has remained united. This stopped the War of Northern Aggression in its tracks. They rose up as deathless monsters, fighting both the Union and Confederate armies. In Ireland’s alternative history, during the battle of Gettysburg, all those dead bodies didn’t stay dead. Why combat schools? Well, you see…the undead. There are lots of combat schools for negroes, but Miss Preston’s is one of the best. The Plotĭread Nation is the two-part story of Jane McKeene, a student at Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls. This book is as stand-up, fierce, and wryly funny as anything I’ve read in a while. She’s a stand-up advocate for Young Adult fiction and how to improve the inclusion of marginalized writers in “the mainstream.” So when she announced her latest book, Dread Nation, I hit pre-order right quick. As fierce and touching and slightly funny as the stories are in Fiyah, Justina is the same. I first began following Justina Ireland’s writings about a year ago, after reading the first issue Fiyah Lit Mag, for which she is an editor.
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