Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

Dolls are everywhere in “Night in the Chrysalis.” Cece’s terror overnight begins when she finds a stick doll, though she calms herself as she remembers her own dolls growing up: She played with porcelain dolls, acting as a caregiver for them. When she is trapped in a nightmarish situation with the spirits of a woman and a girl, Cece transforms into a doll herself, made in the image of the girl’s imagination: “Her body was becoming stiff, growing harder and thinner and colder, more delicate, porcelain painted in a deep shade of sienna, darker and more beautiful than she’d ever been, she realized, more perfect in the woman’s image of her, more authentic, more believably real” (156). As Cece transforms, she notices that the doll she becomes does not reflect her own image but rather the stereotyped image of Indigenous Americans the girl possesses. In addition, Cece loses her bodily autonomy as she becomes a doll, including the ability to move her limbs, leaving her under the complete control of whoever plays with her. This echoes the violent limitations placed on Indigenous Americans’ autonomy—e.g., forced displacement. Dolls therefore become a motif for the theme of Intergenerational Trauma as the Legacy of Colonization, as Cece must confront this stereotype and the broader impact of anti-Indigenous racism.