Shapeshifting from the margins : ethnicity and werewolves in the Twilight series

Werewolves are opposed to vampires in an ongoing war throughout Stephenie Meyer’s twilight fantasy series for young adults. Meyer’s wolves warrant closer attention because of the persistent lines drawn between them as wolves and shapeshifters from the Native American Quileute tribe who live in comparative poverty on the La Push reservation. In many cases the vampires are privileged to the reader over the wolves, which provokes serious questions given the consistent framing of vampires as rich white characters and wolves as poor Indigenous characters. Yet the narrative also partly undercuts these implicit hierarchies by allowing the werewolves to emerge from the margins as postcolonial figures of freedom and change, and by ultimately collapsing the rigid divisions between the two groups.