Month: November 2018

I’ve spent the last month trying to keep my life in order (e.g. homework, my own life problems, etc.) and failing. This is hard for me to admit because I’ve always been the person who knew what she was doing. If I didn’t, I was able to stumble along without anyone noticing. Now, here I am at the end of my first semester in college and I have no idea what I’m doing, how to get where I’m going, or even where that even is. I’m tired. I’m burned out. I’m almost done (for a little while.) And, here I am, trying to claw my way to end of this semester.  Continue reading “Who Can Help With This Burnout?”

One of the most impressive qualities that I read the Stillness’ humans to have was their consideration of time and legacy in their decision making. After all, the Sanzed Empire was only able to maintain its power and the oppression of orogenes because it had a referenceable past that was hundreds of years old. This past is uncontestable because  they are able to dominate the Stillness as the victor and therefore the author of their origins. From this position they could squash opposition using their developed power structure. There is a perfection to this oppression despite it being so horrible and offensive to free speech sensibilities as well as the generally held belief that racism is bad. The length of this engineered past that is used to oppression orogenes is what I consider to be the most important aspect of Sanzed’s sustained power. Continue reading “Geologic Time Scales and Goosebumps”

Probably the most apparently strange aspects of The Fifth Season is in its perspective. Jemisin uses not only three different characters within the novel, but more than one perspective. I found this to be one of the most intriguing aspects to both the narrative and storytelling format itself. Jemisin’s usage of second person perspective was especially strange but in ways incredibly effective.

Continue reading “The Second Person Perspective”

Apologies in advance for how many times I say the word “relationship”. It certainly grated on me.

Jemisin’s ability to write characters that reasonably react and exist in the world she has created is evident in the example of Alabaster and Essun’s relationship and how it evolved overtime. The sexual nature of that relationship was forced by the Fulcrum as part of an inhumane breeding program and was always treated as awkward, uncomfortable and undesirable by both parties. Essun, who went by Syenite at the time, chafed under the expectations of the Fulcrum and bitterly resented that they forced her to have a relationship at all with Alabaster. Acting on this building tension, she often took out her frustration on Alabaster by venting verbally on how his behavior frustrates her when in reality she nitpicks his actions in order to find something to complain about that she would otherwise not care about. Alabaster likewise often closed himself off to her, withholding his thoughts and resenting her behavior though for different reasons. There was initially a misunderstanding between the two, Essun believed that treating Alabaster as a superior was proper behavior and would benefit her more than being more casual and familiar with him, when Alabaster hated this false superiority that came with the rank the Fulcrum allowed him. If the two had met under the circumstances of being simply two people coming together by chance it seems far more likely that they would be more agreeable to each other, but the impositions of the society that surrounds them initially isolates them from each other, likely by design. As they continue traveling together, Alabaster takes up the archetype of the mentor, showing Essun what he can of how predatory their society was towards orogenes and they grow closer, though they do not quite seem like lovers as is typically portrayed. Most couples rely on each other, with one party often rendered helpless so that another might be able to save them, often the male party is empowered to help their “damsel in distress”. Essun and Alabaster are not like this, as Essun has great difficulties openly displaying trust or love due to the deep-seeded trust issues implanted by guardians and the abusive attitudes towards orogenes taken up by most people. The closest they become is in their connection via their son, Corundum as parents and that connection is shattered almost immediately when Essun is forced by Shaffa to murder her own child to prevent him from being forced into the same life she was forced to life.

It is unfair to portray Essun and Alabaster’s relationship as strange without acknowledging what I mean by a “normal” relationship. I should clarify, by normal I by no means intend to imply that this type of companionship is in any way correct, better or morally superior to any other way people choose to be together, it is simply what I observe as a general expectation of society on how people are together. There is a great deal of presupposition, not only that a man and a woman would be together but also that they would intend to procreate and remain together for the long term. There are also expectations that the woman care extensively for the child and devote herself to its care and upbringing no matter the personal cost, while the man is expected to remain and provide for the child though expectations are less harsh for the man and harder to enforce socially or even legally.

Essun and Alabaster are hurt by this dynamic when it is forced on them. It drives them apart and makes both of them uncomfortable and unhappy. Coru changes things, and through him, they both hope that something can be different, that maybe they can save their child from the fate that befell them and bring him into a life that is better than theirs. They learn quickly that this is not a world that will allow that to happen as Guardians converge on them and Essun is given only one awful way to prevent Coru from living life as either a node maintainer or as a mad slave like Alabaster. I believe that Jemisin uses Essun and Alabaster’s early relationship to show how enforcing a certain type of relationship on people is harmful and inhumane.

At its core, The Broken Earth trilogy is about defying the unfair and inhumane constraints put on people and working towards a better future. I believe that extends to those who wish to share each other’s lives in a way that maybe many others do not. Essun and Alabaster’s relationship was plagued with the hardships brought upon them by a system that profits from their enslavement and dehumanization and yet the theme of people being too hard to keep down rears its head and they have a companionship despite an entire world that fights to keep them weak.

“And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’” (Genesis). Continue reading “The Moon: Jemisons Fruit of Knowledge”

A year and a half ago I was a teacher-counselor for a summer camp that SUNY Geneseo hosts for Rochester City School District. That iteration of the camp was themed around Mars colonization and asked students to take up the cause of saving the human race or, at the very least, preserving it. The body that funded the camp required that the children partake in a STEM based curriculum, but I was pleased to find that we were able to work different aspects of social justice and art into the material we taught. Since our course title is getting at social justice in a mostly scientific context, I was reminded of the teachers at this STEM camp that were intent on getting students to understand community as much as they were understanding rudimentary rocket propulsion.

How Jemisin organized comms in the world of the Stillness was something that immediately reminded me of how my students had talked about organizing their Mars colonies. Continue reading “What children learn from colonizing Mars is the same thing we learn from comm organization”

From the very first chapter in the Broken Earth series it is made clear that our narrator is funny. The speaker, who 400 pages later we will find out is Hoa (The Fifth Season 443), tells us, after describing the catastrophic Rifting, that he must “keep things grounded, ha ha” (9). I believe there is significance to the placement of this line. Sandwiched between an account of a disaster which killed millions, and Essun’s grappling with the reality of her son Uche’s brutal murder, we find an extremely incongruous, casually-delivered pun. With such lofty goals as appeasing Father Earth’s wrath in order to save humanity, why does Hoa take the time to crack jokes? And why in the midst of such bleak circumstances? The evolutionary approach to humor analysis taken by Glenn E. Weisfield in his 1993 article “The Adaptive Value of Humor and Laughter” may hold some answers.

Continue reading “Hoa’s Humor — Why Jemisin Jokes”

So, after going back through The Stone Sky a bit, I noticed that the people of Castrima’s trek through the desert was a familiar scene and in a part of the story that reminded me of another story, that of Moses freeing his people from Egypt. The more I thought about the connection, the more similarities between the tales began occurring to me, at first more obvious things like how orogenes are an oppressed people who have recently been freed from servitude to tyrants but then more minute details like how Rennanis, as an equitorial city comprised mostly of Sanzed can easily represent the Egyptians, coming to reclaim their slaves and take back the freedom the orogenes of Castrima now had. Continue reading “Castrima as “The Chosen People””

In class, earlier in the semester, we discussed Corundum’s death in The Fifth Season (447). Essun, Innon, and Alabaster were parents to Corundum and swore to protect him from the hands of the Fulcrum. The Fulcrum was the foundation of the systematic slavery the orogenes had to face, which Essun and Alabaster experienced firsthand. But with the arrival of the Guardians on the island, Essun was forced to make the difficult decision of killing Corundum in order to spare him from the future pain he would have had to face in the Fulcrum. Corundum had no voice in his death as he was a young child, but nevertheless, it was nonconsensual. Personally, I think Essun made the correct decision, but that’s neither here nor there. But with the idea that childhood is mostly a nonconsensual experience in mind, I couldn’t help be reminded of the fascinating murder case of Dee Dee and her daughter Gypsy.

Continue reading “The Nonconsensual Aspect of Childhood”