ABSTRACT
Violet Allen’s “The Venus Effect” (2016) challenges its audience by presenting its readers with stereotypes and police brutality, forcing readers to consider them. This strategy is embedded in the very structure of the narrative and the metafictional features it employs when the main character gets repeatedly killed by a man in a police uniform. Explorations of Allen’s use of metafiction and stereotypes in the narrative demonstrate how, rather than turning inwards in self-reflection or self-consciousness, metafiction in “The Venus Effect” is communicative and cocreative. By addressing its readers directly, Allen’s narrative transforms metafictional self-reflectivity into readers’ self-exploration.
