Abstract

In the contemporary postmodern era, the boundaries that once rigidly separated well-established genres have become more fluid, resulting in what scholars Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan call ‘genre-blurring’. This phenomenon of incorporating elements from diverse genres represents a challenge to dominant ideologies and expands the possibilities within fictional texts. The dystopian fiction written by feminist writers towards the end of the twentieth century and beyond significantly exemplifies this form of hybrid textuality. In doing so, these writers seek to renovate the dystopian genre by making it both formally and politically oppositional. This article aims to explore Midnight Robber (2000), a feminist dystopian novel by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican–Canadian writer, to illustrate how the author manipulates the generic boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and mythology. By amalgamating Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural beliefs, mythical creatures and traditional knowledge systems with a technologically advanced future world, Hopkinson challenges the essentially White, Eurocentric model of dystopian fiction. The article will also examine how, as an Afrofuturist writer, Hopkinson attempts to challenge and subvert the patriarchal discourse of dystopian fiction, traditionally dominated by White male writers, through a strong Black female character, Tan-Tan, who seeks to resist the patriarchal structures governing her, and finally succeeds in emerging as a female leader figure. For this purpose, Barbara Creed’s insights into the monstrous-feminine are explored, introducing novelty into the discourse of feminist dystopia.