Wardzala-Blaeser is a writer to watch. This story, which was included in Never Whistle At Night: A Indigenous Anthology of Dark Fiction, is enthralling and fantastic. It hits my creative center while also reminding me of the tokenization that occurs in academic institutions, which have become hellholes for shortsighted bootlickers and incompetent cronies. An English major, who is Anishinaabe, attends a gathering at an “esteemed” professor’s house (because all these fools want to be esteemed) to ask if the professor will write a letter of recommendation. The professor’s walls are decorated with the heads of BIPOC students who she has helped, claiming these student’s successes as her own, as white supremacy does in institutions because these institutions were created out of white supremacy. Despite the horror of the walls of heads the character comes to a crossroads: run, and perhaps keep her life and integrity, or succumb to the professor’s blood and accolade lust and request the letter of recommendation for assured fame. This prompts me to reflect: does writer give readers what they want and desire, the trauma porn of struggle, or say, fuck the reader. Either way, there’s something to be lost?
Collected in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Anthology of Dark Fiction, Vintage, 2023
A Personal Anthology 