“A good zombie story is never really about the zombies,” Ireland says, and while dealing with various hindrances, her characters develop a “consciousness of knowing that they live in a country that doesn’t necessarily value them the same way it values other people.” Throughout Dread Nation, the author incisively and repeatedly broaches racism, classism, sexism and religion as tools for social control, as well as the politicization of zombies and the use of pseudoscience to try to justify it all. When Jane and her rival-the demure, rational, beautiful Katherine-are invited to the mayor’s house as a reward for their lifesaving zombie-combat heroics, they soon discover that the zombies aren’t the only evils they’ll have to face down, nor are they the most sinister. Though she’s one of the top students, Jane isn’t content to become a bodyguard for the daughter of a rich, white family. Since Jane is biracial, she was sent to combat school as required by the Native and Negro Reeducation Act-in order to “groom the savage” out of her. Jane was born the same week that the zombies-known as “shamblers”-first rose from their graves.
When Dread Nation opens, we meet the smart, fiery, impulsive Jane McKeene, who’s been training for years at Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls. “War is horrible enough because you’ve just lost someone, but there’s a whole new level of trauma when your dead friend is trying to eat your face.” The Battle of Gettysburg, which resulted in the largest number of casualties in the entire Civil War, “seemed like the perfect terrible moment for things to get even worse,” says Ireland.
Ireland is speaking from her home in York, Pennsylvania, about an hour from both Gettysburg and the city of Baltimore, where her third novel, an artful blend of alternate history and horror titled Dread Nation, takes place. The only difference is that you’re defending yourself from your neighbor rather than a ravaging horde.” “And the Civil War did the same thing historically-derailed everything. “My brain works in concentric circles, and I always think of zombies as leading to upheaval and change, as signaling the end of an era and the beginning of a new one,” Ireland says. For Justina Ireland, the dark history of the American Civil War and the fantastical concept of zombies aren’t nearly as far apart as most people think.
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