Dread Nation: Genre & YA lit

4/27/2021

OVERVIEW: This novel is an example of "genre fiction" (as opposed to literary fiction) in addition to being YA. In your post to the discussion board this week, in 300 words, discuss how the conventions of this genre (sci-fi/fantasy/horror) work with or against the conventions we see in YA. How could reading a novel like Dread Nation connect young people to the kinds of texts typically taught in a high school classroom? How could it connect young readers (or any readers) to our actual world? Respond thoughtfully in 100-200 words to a colleague.

A FEW NOTES: Most of you know genre fiction because it is often everything that you read that is not for school. Harry Potter? That's genre fiction--it's fantasy, I think that dominate pleasure reading genre for YA is fantasy. That's not an expert opinion, it's my sense of what years and years of students read. Other genres? Mystery. Sci Fi. I would call Hunger Games a kind of science fiction story in that it takes place without wizards and magic but instead relies on an alternate universe and a lot of technology. We will be reading one next week. Horror--Stephen King, for instance. Also, on the more adult end, things like romance. I offer this to help you think about what I mean when I say "genre" fiction.

Consider what we've been talking about as the conventions of YA Lit:

Melodrama
A relationship to authority
A Bildungs Roman, or coming of age story
Narrative that essentially teaches readers how to read other narratives (best case scenario).

Think about the intersection of these two ideas about genre as you post.

11 Comments

Grace Donnelly

4/27/2021 03:01:32 pm

The biggest way this type of genre fiction compliments YA is in of the themes of rebellion, resistance against authority, and autonomy. Fantasy or scifi like Dread Nation, especially, showcase these themes. For example, in addition to being rebellious toward her teachers by reading novels, writing letters, and sneaking around, Jane also undertakes a much larger rebellion against the Mayor, Miss Anderson, Mr. Redfern and Sheriff Snyder. Ultimately, both of these rebellions are important, even though one is comprised of “smaller” actions.
Exposing students to these stories is like giving them superheroes, examples to be inspired by. Such works may instill in young readers the courage to stand up to authority, to challenge their beliefs and what they are being taught. This, however, is easily carried too far, and to a casual reader, or one who isn’t critical, they may see this rebellion as a free pass to sneer at the words of any adult they encounter. In that way, it becomes a paradox: the book is telling readers “do as I say, not as I do,” and some don’t think—they just do.
I do think this fear is overblown; I never tried to take down a country like Katniss just because I’d read about it. More than anything, the books are a way to explore many different lives.
Dread Nation in particular is an excellent text to use in the high school classroom when teaching the aftermath of the Civil War and the subsequent Reconstruction. While To Kill a Mockingbird is traditionally popular but difficult for students to approach, and novels like Beloved contain content too mature the high school classroom, Dread Nation contains the character, sass and snark to engage its audience, while alluding to enough historical fact to spark classroom discussions or in-depth writing assignments after the novel is finished.

Demi C Riendeau

4/27/2021 04:04:49 pm

Hi Grace, I really like how you brought up the themes of rebellion, because I think this is a specific sub-set of struggles with authority that are seen in other young adult texts. Sci-fi and fantasy take these struggles with authority to a new level and give us lovable and fierce characters. I also love how you pointed out that these characters of rebellion could be students and readers "superheros" that was a way that I had not thought of it previously. I brought up how I might be concerned that the issues would be massive for students to relate and I think you put this into a great perspective where students can look up these strong characters. I also like how you connected this to To Kill A Mockingbird. I have not ready that book in almost 7 years so it did not come to mind but I think that would be a great text to connect this to that is normally a required text.

Nicholas Ceniseroz

4/27/2021 03:45:12 pm

I think in various cases the conventions of Dread Nations genre works fairly well with the conventions of YA. For one, it’s not like the elements of YA would just magically disappear when characters happen to exist in a setting other than the ordinary world. There’s no reason for melodrama to not exist, people are always going to have some kind of relationship to authority, young people will come of age in some way or another so long as the story happens to focus on them. In some cases, most notoriously with sci-fi, elements of genre fiction can help emphasize elements of social and political commentary, of course those associated with YA.
With Dread Nation, of course there’s plenty of melodrama where people die and get eaten while living under a government that is problematic to say the least. Jane has a very noteworthy relationship to authority, rebelling and/or often sassily criticizing authority figures like teachers she doesn’t like and government officials who are mishandling the national zombie crisis. Despite being a fantasy/sci-fi story, it doesn’t just spawn the values of the setting’s society out of nowhere either, and takes the values of history at the time to construct a society built on those principles. So, even though the exact scenario of a zombie apocalypse never happened, we can still look at the systems in place in the novel and draw parallels and discuss how it relates to history, modern society, and other literature that cover similar topics.
Even outside the racism aspect, I was humorously surprised early on how close it hit home when Jane criticized how people keep jumping the gun on declaring cities zombie-free when all it takes is just a few cases for apocalypse to happen all over again and it’s not really over until it’s over. I just found that aspect pretty interesting considering all the quarantine troubles going on in America and the fact that this was written in 2018 before Covid was even a thing. I feel like there are some good conversations you could have with a class about that.

Maria Pestilli

5/4/2021 12:16:02 pm

Hi Nicholas!

I also think it is interesting to look at this story through a lens of Pre-Covid. Before Covid, people did not think the world could be brought to its knees by sickness. We all saw it as something that would never happen. But this was obviously not the case and that is what makes me really interested by this story. I wonder if it were written during Covid if it would be different in some way. Would the situation of the outside world change how the story is written or would it stay the same? It is super interesting to think about. Great observation!

Ashley Munoz

4/27/2021 03:49:14 pm

I think in this particular story we see the conventions of the fantasy/horror genre meld quite nicely with what we see for generic tropes with young adult literature. We have a well-developed setting – pre? /post-apocalyptic America with the undead going around making everyone else undead, there is the power struggle between whites/government and the blacks and natives who are caste below them as guards and deadweight more or less. We also have a central conflict of working to make life the way it was before the war (getting rid of the undead) and the racism with the caste system that is in place. With the conventions of the horror genre, we see scenes with supernatural occurrences that strike fear into the reader, the vaccine not working at the lecture and causing mayhem for example. There is also the obvious malevolent side to humanity that we see throughout the book, by use of racism against the blacks and natives, using them as fodder for the undead so that the whites may save themselves. The author ties this in with young adult literature by using a teenage character set, all who have backgrounds that make their individual stories unique/tragic. When it comes to high school, I feel that a novel like Dread Nation would connect young readers very well with our actual real-life world. Despite being set “before” our time and in an alternate universe where the undead walk, the power struggle between government, and caste are relatable to real life struggles of those who are trodden upon. I can’t lie and pretend I could personally relate to any of it, however, from the stories I have heard from others, and after reading this book, I can see the connections that can be made in the modern day world.

4/27/2021 05:09:59 pm

I kinda get what you mean about struggling to relate to the characters. While obvoiusly characters struggles in relation to the world and social systems around them are important for understanding the greater themes of the story, I do feel like hyperfocusing on that aspect, coupled with the sheer severity of struggle the characters go through makes the characters as people a bit more difficult to relate to. Like, for other stories we've read, even when a character is a different gender or from a different background with different experiences to me, I can still usually find something to relate to, or at least see as understandable or believable that I can see how others can relate. But for a significant portion of the early parts of Dread Nation, all I really got out of Jane as a person is that she's apparently supposed to be a badass because she doesn't like the authorities and she's paranoid and obsessed with killing zombies. Like, I suppose in the context of the story it makes sense for her and others to be like that, but it just makes things a little harder to latch on to.

4/27/2021 03:55:12 pm

I think the elements of fantasy and horror work really well with the genre of YA. The author of Dread Nation uses an imaginary world of zombies and shamblers to show Jane’s path or growing up and standing up to “authority” although it is arguable about who authority is—teacher’s at Ms. Preston’s, the sheriff, the priest, shamblers themselves. Through this scary and dangerous world, we follow Jane make intense bonds with women, learn more about love (through her many potential love interests—though I am rooting for Red Jack, and fight back against injustice).
The only way I can see this working against the genre of young adult is through the relatability of characters, as Jane is going through much more than I could ever imagine. Although, this has not proved an issue in other very successful young adult texts (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games). That would be my only real concern as otherwise I think this is a beautifuly crafted text that I enjoyed reading (and may purchase the sequel).
I think this text could really help connect students with the world and history. Although the text is obviously fiction, a lot of the structures created do exist in the world, such as Indian Boarding Schools, which Ireland adds advanced reading to gain knowledge on. I think this text could be used as structural analysis for many aspects of our history and current society and therefore make it valuable for a variety of grade levels. If reading this with an older class I think it would be really interesting to discuss not only the Indian Boarding Schools, but also current day cities. The structure of Summerville was eerily familiar to that of current large cities like LA where there is the glamorous and wealthy end and then parts of the city that are extremely underfunded and treated extremely poorly.

4/28/2021 08:35:53 am

Hi Demi, while I do agree with the majority of your post, I believe that the concern of relatability due to the amount of things Jane is going through is not necessarily founded. I feel that as a teenager Jane is going through many things she would have during a war-time period in our own reality. Subtract the zombification and this story could be based on a “true” past. I think when we have all these pieces intermingled it can make it more engaging for the reader because they want to see how and why all these things intermingle. Like you said, other fiction books, like Harry Potter, with their complex plots and characters were world-wide hits with the YA audience and more. I think if I were to teach this I would want to do it in conjunction with the students learning about the Revolutionary War and the after affects as they could learn about what happened to us, and see that this story really does have some basis in our own history. I also felt that this was very reminiscent of The Walking Dead, with the zombies and walled off towns, so this is another connection students could make with the text....if its still popular that is....

5/4/2021 12:11:52 pm

“Dread Nation” is a lot darker than the other stories we have read this semester. The feeling of hopelessness is rampant throughout the story. By the end of it I had no idea how the main character Jane could live? America is being overrun by Zombies and this takes place in a time where medicine is not as advanced as ours, the situation is quite overwhelming. Even with the insane scale of this story there is still YA themes present. Even though the main characters are in such a horrible situation there is still time for melodrama. An example of this is when Katherine finds out Jane used to have a boyfriend, which is not allowed, and was going to use this info to blackmail her but then Jane finds out Katherine wears a corset which is also not allowed so they are at a stale mate. Even with a story where people die in almost every chapter there is still time for melodrama. The story is also about challenging authority. This story is filled to the brim with groups that are working against the main characters there are religious organizations, the government, and just white people in general. Which I have to say, the white people in this story are horrible and I am happy that many of them were killed, they were all bigots anyways. Jane spends the whole story fighting authority whether that be the higher ups at the academy or the higher ups at Summerland. Jane cannot catch a break and is constantly struggling her way through the story. This is also a coming-of-age story. Sure, the main character is growing up during the zombie apocalypse, but she is still growing up. But out of these three ideas I would say fighting authority is the most important. Jane is constantly fighting to survive and for what she thinks is right which is way more important than melodrama.

tenneh sesay

5/4/2021 06:45:07 pm

The genre fiction of YA is that the themes is rebellion and resistance against the authority and autonomy. The fantasy and scifi like Dread Nation is and showcase of themes. Being a rebellious is toward her teacher by reading an novels, writing letters and sneaking around, but Janes is also a undertake so much rebellion against the Mayor, Miss Anderson, Mr. Redfern and Sheriff Snyder. These stories is like giving them superheroes, examples to be inspired by

Hannah MacDonald

5/8/2021 09:23:50 am

Dread Nation's greatest strength as a YA Literature novel is its relationship with authority. When people are coming of age, they begin to explore autonomy and their own ethics. As children, we do not question adults in power, because we are more trusting and see the world in a more optimistic way. As teenagers gain knowledge about the world around them they start to see injustices more. Even injustices towards themselves that they may have not noticed previously become more apparent as they gain knowledge. In Dread Nation, we see Jane discover many injustices in her life and reality, and rebel against these notions. The fact that it challenges authority in a Zombie setting allows the author to explore this idea without as much controversy since it is not directly an example.

Dread Nation: Genre & YA lit

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