As I finish writing this final blog post, with less than an hour to go, I can’t help but think about how time was visibly and literally running out for the people of the Stillness in The Stone Sky. The air was becoming thinker with ash, the acid rains would probably begin soon, everything was dying around them. Even the artics were beginning to show the signs of the season. Continue reading “Time is Running Out”
The Choice in Living
“Childhood is a nonconsensual experience”
Dr. McCoy managed to summarize the feeling of futility felt throughout our childhood years in one simple phrase. Most of us have felt some degree of regret or fruitlessness about our childhood. There are parts we wish to change and some we wish to relive. Yet, despite whatever our backgrounds may be, there is always this sense that we didn’t control as much as we wanted to. Childhood was perhaps our most vulnerable time. We did not have the choice of entering this world. We were not briefed or prepared for whatever was occurring here. Instead, we were thrown into the world and forced to face the present. Continue reading “The Choice in Living”
Don’t Judge A Person By Their Name
In The Stone Sky, the people of Syl Anagist who created the stone eaters, or tuners, at the time, gave each stone eater a name ending in the suffix -wha. Once I noticed this, it got me thinking— what rusting reason could there possibly be for labeling a comm’s minorities as such? The only one I can think of is passive segregation, as a silent yet insistently present reminder of what rather than who the stone eaters are. Continue reading “Don’t Judge A Person By Their Name”
The Planet is Fine
“When we say ‘the world has ended,’ it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.” -The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
A specialist in tectonics, structural geology, and field mapping, and currently serving as co-chair for the President’s Commission on Sustainability, Dr. Meg Reitz came to speak to our class a few weeks ago, and the idea that stuck with me most from her lecture was what she said about climate change. To paraphrase, she said that geologically speaking, Earth will be fine. Humans are the ones in trouble.
Contemplating the How
As our blog posts are coming to a close, I wanted to start getting myself into the reflective mindset in preparation for our final reflective essay. Reflection is something that I have touched on already in a few of my previous blog posts, and I have come to truly see how it offered me an incredible tool when it came to brainstorming new content when I felt at a loss for topics of new posts.
Dr. McCoy had asked this a few times, both in class and in response to my blog posts: How? Continue reading “Contemplating the How”
The Future (I hope), Solarpunk: How Good Does That Sounds?
Fun fact: In 9th grade, my English teacher tasked us with the difficult assignment of creating our own utopian society. We needed to create the foundation which included the Declaration of Independence and the geography of our population, the culture our residents would uptake, the economy such as jobs and agriculture, and finally the laws and policies within our society. As most 14-year olds would think, it was a pretty good project. It meant that we could build our very own world from the ground up but, most importantly, it meant that we didn’t have to read any more boring books. Continue reading “The Future (I hope), Solarpunk: How Good Does That Sounds?”
A Response to Jose Romero: Catching a Drift of Fear
First I would like to say, oh my goodness, I am ecstatic to see that Jose wrote his blog post about fear and fear of writing because I would have thought I was the only one feeling this way throughout the semester! Even up until now I could have written a blog post about my fear, but ironically my fear of writing stopped me from doing so! Jose, if you are reading this, you are so brave for opening up about it. Continue reading “A Response to Jose Romero: Catching a Drift of Fear”
Blackness, Justice, and Love
Throughout the semester we were to think about how the title of the course connects with the course content. “Blackness” was easy. Most of the characters were black, but their blackness did not define them. This was a nice change, I think from traditional postcolonial literature that I usually encountered and studied during my time in undergrad. I mean this in the sense that the characters were so multidimensional that having dark skin was just an adjective and not a character defining trait. Continue reading “Blackness, Justice, and Love”
The Psychological Need to Call Someone “Mom”
I would like to explore Nassun’s relationship with her three most notable parental figures, first providing my own analysis of why Nassun is not able to stop calling her mother “Mama”, even though she had previously resolved to call her Essun. This is following her solemn decision to call her father by his first name as well, except to his face, in order to keep up the facade of the innocent, loving daughter. Continue reading “The Psychological Need to Call Someone “Mom””
Beauty is Pain
By Sarah Bracy, Lauren Ngo, & Jose Romero
The first line of our blog post, “Starting Over After the End of the World” reads, “With pain there is beauty…” and now that we have finished reading The Stone Sky and have learned about Syl Anagist, we realize this line carries a much deeper meaning. We now know that Syl Anagist was built on the pain and suffering of stone eaters (at that time called tuners), who were treated as less than humans because they were created to emulate the Niess people, for whom the people of Syl Anagist had a deep distrust and hate. We were originally led to imagine Syl Anagist as a beautiful utopia, an unattainable ideal that everyone needs to work towards. But Jemisin soon revealed to us that the breathtaking Syl Anagist was only so beautiful because its people gleaned power from Father Earth without a second thought. In The Stone Sky, Hoa says at one point that these Sylanagistines used the magic that came from Father Earth because they believed he had no feelings — in short, they assumed he had no humanity. Continue reading “Beauty is Pain”