ABSTRACT
The chapter examines how race and gender stereotypes enter into dystopian and post-apocalyptic narrative and how, and whether, they have any connection with environmental discourse. The “heroic male agent” is the first object of attention, as this figure reflects all the possible factors for discrimination: those of gender (he is male and heterosexual), race (he is white), age (he is young, but not adolescent), and those related to the body (he is always, or almost always, able-bodied). He is often also a father, with a protective attitude not only towards women and the family, but also towards nature, reproducing the typical dualism between a passive, female nature and the active, male culture. Not all dystopian literature reproduces this narrative trope: two of Margaret Atwood’s novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, suggest that ecological imbalance and gender oppression go hand in hand, while the many strong and rebellious heroines now populating young adult literature and its film adaptations try to overturn these gender stereotypes. Still, neither Atwood’s novels nor young adult literature tackle the issue of race. Overall, dystopia and post-apocalypse seem to be a matter for whites. Conversely, the theme of the apocalypse deserves to be read on the side of those who have already had such an experience, that is, have seen their world end and be replaced by a different world, such as Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. The chapter ends considering Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018), a post-apocalyptic novel by the Anishinaabe author Waubgeshig Rice.
