Between “Castoff” and “Half-Man”

Abstract

In this chapter, Susan Tan examines race and multi-racial identity in Ship Breaker and Drowned Cities, drawing on posthumanism, and specifically, Elaine Grahame’s discussion of posthuman monstrosity as a means of identity articulation. Focusing on the characters of Mahlia and Tool, this essay explores how racial identity is elided in favor of larger discussions of what it means to be “human.”  To examine this silencing of racial issues in a set of texts that initially showcase diversity and questions of race, the essay considers the subtle ways in which common YA dystopian tropes of human hybridity, technology, and national belonging can work to dismiss and dispel real engagement with racial difference.