Much of the criticism on Thomas King's fiction focuses on border crossing, and rightly so: national boundaries, town lines, bridges, rivers, and myriad other signs point to in-between spaces where King renegotiates hierarchical binaries. The role of gender in relation to this motif, though, remains underexplored. King's texts are full of gender-ambiguous characters, some of whom harness the power to revise the dominant discourses of Empire, but discussions of gender have nevertheless taken the proverbial backseat to discussions of race. This is surprising, given that the intersectionality of race and gender has been well established in feminist and postcolonial theory for decades. One of the primary aims of this chapter, then, is to direct more attention to the intersection of race and gender, itself an “in-between” space in King's writing.

I am, of course, not alone in this endeavor. Though there is scant criticism on King's treatment of gender, there are some notable exceptions. Perhaps the most pertinent to this essay is Davidson, Walton, and Andrews's book Border Crossings, which suggests that King's genderbending characters signal dis-ease with the subordinate position of matrilineal Native traditions to patriarchal European ones. Linda Lamont-Stewart similarly points out that King's representations of androgyny compliment his efforts to refigure historical appropriations of Native culture. Both studies are important to King scholarship insofar as they underscore the ways in which unconventional gender roles assist in the deconstruction of European hierarchies.