"It Has to Stop": Refusing Colonial Narratives in The Only Good Indians

Abstract: This article examines Stephen Graham Jones's 2020 horror-revenge novel The Only Good Indians , arguing that the work's diversions from generic convention are an enactment of epistemic and formal refusal. The novel's refusals function to both expose the constraints of settler-colonial subjectivity and story other modes of selfhood and relationality. The framework of refusal can also help scholars and readers to better theorize Indigenous genre works, in particular the ways Indigenous storying practices must respond to the formal, affective, and philosophical expectations obligations that give structure to western genres.