Book Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

First line : The day I came squealing and squalling into the world was the first time someone tried to kill me. First, this cover. LOVE IT. Second, this premise. LOVE IT. In brief: the dead rose after the battle of Gettysburg, and the formerly enslaved are freed -- but only to kill the undead. Our heroine, Jane McKeen, is rich, complicated character. Born on a failing plantation to a white mother, she ends up in Philadelphia at Miss Preston's School of Combat for Negro Girls, training to be a white woman's bodyguard. But she chafes at the rules, frustrated she can clear out cities she'll never truly be welcome in, and she struggles to balance work with the passions of personal life. From the start, Ireland's novel makes the point that whatever the era, were there a zombie outbreak, white supremacy culture would have demanded that people of color be the ones combating it . I love speculative fiction for imagining what could be, and that's what is so c