You Are What You Eat: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Part 3)

Why It Matters

Jones’s reimagining of vampire lore through Indigenous perspectives challenges genre conventions and highlights how horror can interrogate historical trauma, making the novel a notable cultural touchstone for both literary criticism and the expanding market for diverse speculative fiction.

Summary

The Reactor Magazine column “Reading the Weird” reviews chapters 5‑6 of Stephen Graham Jones’s 2025 novel *The Buffalo Hunter Hunter*, focusing on the protagonist Good Stab’s transformation into a blood‑drinking, shape‑shifting creature. The piece details his cursed existence—photosensitivity, an insatiable need for liquid blood, and the horrific side‑effect that he physically becomes whatever he consumes—while interweaving commentary on the novel’s use of Indigenous myth (the Nachzehrer/atupyoye) and Jones’s deliberate subversion of classic vampire tropes. Contributors Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth, and the authors provide analysis of the narrative’s thematic weight, linking Good Stab’s torment to broader questions of cultural guilt, colonial violence, and the evolving definition of vampirism in contemporary horror.