The paper examines Native American writer Sherman Alexie’s speculative poem “The Farm.” The first stanza of Alexie’s poem transports the reader to a future in which an American pharmaceutical company makes a revolutionary medical discovery: they find the cure for cancer. This event is by no means a cause for universal celebration however. The “antiviral agent” with which to stop cancer cells from multiplying is found in the bone marrow of Native American Indians. In Alexie’s sinister scenario, the American president proceeds to issue an edict decreeing that all Indian reservations be closed. Native Americans are to be rounded up and taken to farms, where they will be forcibly made to breed and surrender their now valuable bone marrow. The poem’s subsequent stanzas read as testimonies from Native Americans who describe the dehumanization they undergo on The Bone Marrow Farm.
My paper delves into two aspects of Alexie’s horrifying vision. Firstly, I ask why Alexie chooses to make repeated references to America’s turbulent colonial and slave-holding history in a poem that is ostensibly concerned with the future of new medical technologies. Secondly, I explore the poem’s treatment of race by pitting it against Paul Gilroy’s argument in Against Race. Citing the DNA revolution as a case in point, Gilroy sees in new medical technologies the potential to liberate humanity from the pitfalls of raciological thinking. My paper reads “The Farm” as a cautionary tale that calls for vigilance before enlisting the aid of biotechnology to help imagine a postracial future.