The Native new wave: creative sovereignty in twenty-first century Indigenous genre fiction

My dissertation, “The Native New Wave: Creative Sovereignty in Twenty-First Century Indigenous Genre Fiction,” argues that Indigenous genre writers transform the tropes and conventions of the genres they work in through creative reinscription. I focus on how these acts of tropological transformation make generic conventions into a vehicle to express a political commitment to Indigenous communities. While previous scholarship has often emphasized the “subversive” aspects of Native genre writing, my dissertation reads the current “Native New Wave” as genre enthusiasts who wish for their work to be legible as horror, crime fiction, and speculative fiction to their respective audiences. Chapter 2 focuses on Stephen Graham Jones’s slasher fiction and argues that Jones reimagines the “slasher killer” and “final girl” archetypes while chapter 3 discusses Native crime writers such as Carole laFavor, Marcie R. Rendon, and Angeline Boulley and examines how they use the genre’s individualization of criminality to critique settler vigilantism. In chapter 4, I contend that the postapocalyptic novels of Cherie Dimaline and Waubgeshig Rice use the deaths of Indigenous characters to critique Native ressentiment, identities produced in reaction to settler colonialism. Dimaline, Rice, and Louise Erdrich additionally reinscribe Lee Edelman’s “The Child” to signify as an Indigenous refusal to die. Chapter 5 focuses on the zombie narratives of Morgan Talty, Stephen Graham Jones, and Jeff Barnaby and how each of these creators engage with the generic legacy of George A. Romero. Across multiple genres, writers of the “Native New Wave” demonstrate that the meaning of inherited tropes and conventions is not fixed or static, but capable of reinvention.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Topaum, Cyanne So-Lo-Li

Contributors dc:contributor

• Parker, Robert D.
• Parker, Robert D
• Basu, Manisha
• Byrd, Jodi A
• Tahmahkera, Dustin

• Native American Literature
• Indigenous Literature
• Contemporary Literature
• Genre Fiction
• Genre Studies
• Indigenous Studies
• American Indian Studies

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Cyanne Topaum

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130130

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F130130