Night of the Living Rez is deeply concerned with the idea of inheritances. In some instances, inheritances are given in good faith, as in the case of the money the grandmother leaves for Dee in “Half-Life.” More often than not, though, what these characters inherit are the traumas borne by previous generations. Sometimes, this trauma takes the form of repeated losses: Paige miscarries her child in “In a Jar,” and it’s then revealed in “Food for the Common Cold” that Paige’s mother also lost a child. Substance dependency is another form of inherited trauma: David quite literally inherits his mother’s cigarettes in “Smokes Last,” and Bedogi is born with his mother’s methadone addiction in “The Name Means Thunder.” Many of the characters also inherit their daily living spaces from their parents: Dee, Fellis, and Paige all live with their parents for most of the collection. For Dee, this experience of occupying the same spaces as the generations that came before and reliving their traumas creates a feeling of entrapment—that he is stuck in a cycle he might never escape.

Dee first articulates this feeling of entrapment in “Half-Life,” when, after using his grandmother’s money to buy drugs from Meekew, he reflects on his grandmother smirking at him and realizes, “It had nothing to do with us.