Blurb:
| Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed "The Halloween Capital of the World" since 1937. Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne & Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life. |
Apparently Anoka, Minnesota is the "Halloween Capital of the
World" because they've been having giant Halloween parades since 1920. Out
of civic pride, I want to argue that Salem is the Halloween Capital and our
town is better because we have real witches and Salem
Horror Fest and the oldest candy company in America. On the other hand, I would also like tourists to stop
blocking the traffic, drunkenly climbing on the witch statue, and crowding my
favorite restaurants every October (that's my job), so maybe
it would be better if they all headed to Anoka instead. I don't think anyone
will want to go anywhere near the Minnesota city after reading Shane Hawk's
Indigenous horror anthology of the same name, though. The stories in Anoka are
loosely tied together by their location in an alternative version of the
town where dark magic and monsters lurk. An evil tome known simply as
"the book" and strange green swirls also make multiple appearances
throughout the anthology.
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| I may or may not have actually done this |
American Indians tragically have the highest infant mortality rate in the U.S. (again due to trauma, poverty and a lack of adequate healthcare), so much of Hawk's anthology touches on themes of child death and the trauma that goes with such a great loss. In two stories, Orange and Wounded, the death of a child in the past moves the main characters to do something terrible. Soilborne is a metaphor for the loss of the child-parent connection and how devastating that can be. In Imitate, the protagonist has to rush to save his son, Tate, from an unknown horror that's taken his form. There's no way of knowing if Tate is even still alive, and the whole story is exceedingly stressful to read. Honestly, Imitate would have worked just fine as microfiction and Hawk could have easily ended it after the first page or so. But instead, he decides to pile on even more terror by turning it into a suspenseful short story where we're forced to watch a father slowly lose his mind. It's definitely one of the anthology's stronger and spookier tales.
My absolute favorite story in the collection is Dead America about
a writer named Chaska whose family is followed by death. This is sadly not
uncommon for Native families as generational trauma, poverty, and a lack of
adequate healthcare has lead to poor health and high death rates from heart disease, diabetes, and suicide. The story gets its name from Chaska's hobo nickel which
depicts the skull of a dead Indian chief in full headdress on one side and
Columbus' three ships on the other. "When betting a coin offers someone a
fifty-fifty chance of winning and losing. The nickel was a metaphor for the
predicament of Indian existence: fucked no matter which side the coin landed
on" the author explains. He's about to find out how right he is when
Asibikaashi the Spider Woman decides to make the Dakota author suffer for his
sins.
This story is SCARY. All of my notes for Dead America consist of "nope, nope, nopeity-nope nope, fuck this, nope." I'm not someone who's usually bothered by spiders under normal circumstances. I think they're kind of cute and I love that they eat any bugs that get into the house, but Chaska's punishment left me terrified of arachnids. If you have any form of arachnophobia, I can guarantee you'll be in for some nasty nightmares and might want to skip this story entirely. But if you're feeling brave, it's one of the strongest stories in the collection and worth checking out. The story also touches on themes of profiting off the personal stories of others, very similar to how Ward Churchill, Asa Earl Carter, Mary Summer Rain and others pretended to be Native for fame and money.
It's important to note that in Ojibwe stories Asibikaashi, aka Grandmother Spider, is a benevolent deity and helper of humanity whose spiderweb charms, popularly known as "Dream Catchers", were woven by women as a form of protection for infants. I couldn't find any references to her punishing the wicked (of course I couldn't find many references to her at all that weren't written by White new agers).
Hawk's final story, Transformation, is about a non-binary werewolf
who hunts for her community and runs into trouble at Anoka's annual Halloween
parade. Having a trans werewolf feels perfect because werewolves are the ideal
metaphor for someone with a fluid identity. Sometimes you're a wolf, others a
human, and occasionally you're something in between, but you're always a
werewolf regardless of what form you take that day. Just because I'm femme one
day, it doesn't negate the fact that I'm non-binary; I'm still an enby when I'm
feeling more trans-masculine. Like the story title, werewolves can also
represent transition. The wolf can be seen as the true self, hidden under a
dull human skin that's forced to conform to society's rigid standards. Becoming
the wolves gives you the opportunity to experience freedom. If that
transformation is unwanted, it can be compared to a menstrual cycle that causes
dysphoria each month or unwanted body hair. "Jenny" a transwoman who identifies with werewolves is quoted on
the queer horror blog, Gender Terror: "The titanic proportion of my body and the hair
that I continually fight back terrify me, and makes me the target of many
suspicious onlookers. And just like werewolves, I have no control over what my
body does. Feeling like a prisoner to how your body changes is a special
torment I think a lot of transgender people share with werewolves." So
is it any wonder writers like Hal Schrieve, Allison Moon, Suzanne Walker, Ashlynn Barker, and numerous self-published erotic authors like Noah Harris have all explored the idea of a trans werewolf? Heck
"were-woman" is slang for someone who "transforms" into a
woman at night (though this terminology can be problematic). Hawk's non-binary
werewolf character seemed so cool I was disappointed that their story wasn't
longer. There was so much going on in Transformation it felt
like it would've worked much better as a novella rather than a short story.
Honestly, I'd read a full novel about the nostalgic werewolf, Halloween
parades, and Wendigo. That's my one major complaint about Anoka:
it's too short! The concept was so cool I was disappointed we didn't get to
explore more of Hawk's alternate universe. I wanted to learn more about The
Book and the creepy town filled with dark magic and monsters.
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| Transwolves eat TERFs for breakfast |
What impressed me the most about the story collection is how Hawk was able to handle the subjects of child loss, sexual assault, substance abuse and missing and murdered Indigenous women, especially in his story Wounded, in a way that felt respectful rather than exploitative. Anoka is a fun, frightening ride that draws attention to many of the issues plaguing American Indians today, and I hope we'll get to hear even more stories from the spooky little town in Hawk's future books.
