Category: McCoy 101/431 Jemisin Fall 2018

Understanding a Slave Narrative

In the period of American history shortly before the Civil War, a type of biography became quite popular in the north. These were the stories of those slaves escaped from the South who could either write their own tales, or dictated to abolitionists their harrowing experiences as slaves. Famous among them where the stories of Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, which depicted a life of being looked down upon or treated as an animal or inferior at best. Many of these stories show a person on the run for a great part of their lives, constantly on the move with little sense of home or safe refuge.

Continue reading “Essun’s Story, a Slave Narrative”

By: Sarah Bracy, Lauren Ngo, & Jose Romero

In our first blog post as a team, titled “Starting Over After the End of the World”, we were successful due to our ability to communicate with each other effectively and work collaboratively. Because we worked so well as a team for our first blog post, a few of us decided to do a couple more together, now that we are finally able to utilize each other’s strengths and knowledge in the most efficient manner. Our post turned out to be even better than we planned because it brought together all of our individual ideas and transformed them into something interdisciplinary and multifaceted. However, this polished final product started off as a pile of scraps that we didn’t quite know what to do with at first. Continue reading “Exploring Collaborative & Interdisciplinary Work”

A good book is one that can make you cry, laugh, scream, and shake with anger all at once.  If the book is lacking in even one of these departments than it’s not worth it and you should put it down and look for greener pastures.  For me, humor has always been difficult to find in books, often times jokes can come off as cheesy or really offensive. Nonetheless, when it is done right, humor can be helpful in setting the mood and keeping the plot moving.  Without humor, books run the risk of being dry. Humor, in general, serves many purposes and Jemisin utilizes them all throughout the series.

Continue reading “The Importance of Humor”

A father’s presence contributes to the development of a child. They are the first introduction to males that a child has. Specifically, the emotional connection they have to their daughters plays a vital role in the establishment of their self-esteem, mental health and the ability to interact. Jija’s connection to Nassun has always confused me. Jija’s fear for the orogene race led him to take the life of his only son. Yet despite being as enraged and violent as he was, Jija refrained from attacking Nassun and fled with her instead. This need to spare his own daughter is daunting in light of the traumatic event that occurred just previously. It is a display of the strong emotional connection within a father/daughter relationship.

Continue reading “Not Your Prince”

I have a confession, both myself and Sabrina Bramwell are academic orogenes. I know how that must sound, crazy, but its something that we both noticed after dicsussing our different approaches to writing blog posts. While we are both orogenes, we come from different academic disciplines, yet we still exhibit similar writing skills, like Essun and Ykka. We established that we have different measurements and ideas of successful writing and how to achieve it, but have come to a middle ground on how to make our “academic orogeny” more beneficial for the both of us. Continue reading “Nobody Panic: I am an Orogene”

The Stone Sky’s final line is a fairly uncomplicated thing, a term we often hear shortly before we begin our tenure into an objective, obstacle, so-on. I’m very well clinging for final reasons to fill the white space on a post, but the line itself is a clear-cut statement of motivation and the like. The line in question also provides some resolve in wanting to get things done. Although I am still of course terrified all the same.

Looking back on several of my posts have me truly wondering if any of those posts were out of genuine merit and curiosity or just to fulfill an obligation. The line alone “So let’s get to it” still resonates as an necessity despite whatever intent there may have been. The same can be said for the very foundation for education and the (incredibly) daunting task of obtaining the general license of said majors in order to in extension – obtain a career. No matter the title of this post, it’s still rather daunting all the same to give so much time, effort, and finances to produce the degrees we are highly sought after. This issue has been a stalemate in my own educational progress for a very long time now, which is in itself amazing that some of us are willing to put so much of ourselves towards something we generally have no idea what shall come of it.

With all of that meandering said, I’m reminded of a section on p. 229 of Jemison’s third book – “You know the end to this. Don’t you? How could you be here listening to this tale if you didn’t? But sometimes it is the how of a thing, not just the endgame, that matters most.” What I suppose I could be saying is that the getting to it all brings a great deal of pressure. Getting to it is easier said than done, and I am rather cynical of the whole “fake it ’til you make it” idea. At the very least, there’s no shame in failure as long as we’ve learned something. In a far less detrimental example, caring about a post or not caring as much may be no different, as long as there is something to grasp in the meantime. Essentially this may count as a long-winded “hang in there” for those who may need it.

I must say, I quite enjoyed Jose Romero’s The World of Children: Immigrant & Oregene Bound blog post. It was compelling, beautifully rendered and intimate. The short anecdotes Romero shares about his parents immigration narrative takes the blog post into an entirely new level of human connectivity. Its blend of sophistication along with its parallels to N.K Jeminsin’s work makes this blog post insightful and complex.

Not only so, but Romero is also successful in discussing our current political climate and drawing in connections to Jemisin’s series that we’ve been discussing throughout the semester. Although fiction, Romero understands the power of a narrative and the complexities and underlying commentary present in Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. Now, full disclosure: our current political climate is intense, just as Romero explicitly suggested in his post. This we know. From uproar rage from protestors demonstrating their disapproval of the President Donald Trump administration, to media frenzy on Trump’s abnoxious twitter tweets and his “Zero Tolerance Policy” on immigration, to the migrant caravan traveling from Central America to the U.S border, the sexual allegations against now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Session’s resignation letter to President Trump as Attorney General after recusing himself from the Robert Muller ongoing Russia investigation and well, the list goes on. What Romero does though is delve into the issue of immigration and compare the immigration narrative to that of the narrative of the Oregenes in the world Jemison created. The stillness in The Fifth Season, for Romero, is that similar to the world we live in—Earth.

In the Fifth Season, we learn that in their world there are Oregenes, the Sanzeds and stone eaters. All these groups represent “different races”and  although we all know there is only one race—the human race, this metaphorical representation in the novel between the both makes the Fifth Season work in multiple levels of interpretation. Further, the composition of all these groups in Jemisin’s work only further strengthens its powerful connection to the world we live in now- reality. And just like in the world of the Fifth Season, the construction of a superior and inferior race is very well present. Oregenes are outcasted and feared, just as many minority groups are. Romero expresses this similarity throughout his post which made me appreciate it even more. As we grew to learn, the life of an orogene is anything but blissful. In fact, being born an orogene almost guarantees you a life of extreme exploitation with little to no sympathy from your peers. Just as Jija’s narrative, immigrants and minorities often live a life of violence and persecution. In his blogpost, Romero expresses this similarity, specifically, that of the power of the Fulcrum and the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and how they both have the authority and power to separate children from their parents. Overall, I must say Romero’s  blog post was not only informative but did an excellent job putting things into perspective.

Whenever I hear or read the phrase “for the greater good” it always makes me feel really uneasy. I feel like something about its connotations and many possible meanings just leaves the definition too open for interpretation. Who gets to decide what the greater good is? Who really is it for? Anyone can claim they’re doing something for the greater good, all they’re really saying is that the ends will justify the means.

Continue reading “For The Greater Good of Who?”