comment on theme

Race plays a crucially important role in Night of the Living Rez, and is indeed baked into the very nature of the collection’s setting; its characters live on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, and are separated from Overtown, a predominantly white community across the river from the reservation, by nothing more than a bridge. Though the residents of the reservation and the residents of Overtown live in close proximity to each other, and frequently interact, there is still a stark divide between the two communities in terms of wealth, money, access, and privilege. That the structure of the setting incorporates a literal gulf between the two worlds is not insignificant; the separation the characters on the reservation feel from the community of Overtown informs a great deal about their actions and psychologies.