As I was reading The Fifth Season, I thought about the sea and why Syenite had expressed disinterest in going near or in the water. I had originally thought that there was no moon so why would there be anything to fear, other than otherworldly sea creatures that is. I also had thought that since there was no moon, there were no waves or currents in the water. So I was especially confused once Alabaster and Syenite went to Meov and it was a community that thrived off of ransacking the Stillness’s ships. Then I did some research on the moon and how it affects our Earth. Continue reading “Making Waves”
A Commentary on Childhood
In a previous post I touch on the topic of consent, but it wasn’t the main point of the post and at the time I hadn’t even considered that aspect to what I was talking about until Dr. McCoy brought it up. What Dr. McCoy said that really stood out to me and got me thinking was “the issue of childhood being a non-consensual experience.” I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. As a society, we have always seen child-rearing and in general, the way we treat children as doing what’s best for them and looking out for their best interest. We never consider that we as the adults are taking all choice away from children. Continue reading “A Commentary on Childhood”
The Future Is Queer
Queerness has always been categorized by a degree of nonconformity. The term has previously been used to define what’s perceived to be strange. Yet, the strangest aspect of this is not the object or individual to which this term is given. In fact, the most unusual part of this is the public’s inability to perceive a change in normality as progress instead of a threat. Usually, when queerness enters literature or film, there is a common plotline for all characters. The importance of their existence is centered around their sexuality. Writers choose to not give a character a solid arc or personality and opt out to produce two-dimensional fillers. Jemisin has refused to fall into that tradition and instead has written queerness as a normal ideal rather than a defining factor.
“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” Continue reading “The Future Is Queer”
Building Blogs off of What I Find on the Internet
One day I was trolling the internet looking for inspiration for a blog post when I came across Jemisin’s own blog. The particular post that I had read discussed why Jemisin chose to split Essun’s story into three seemingly different stories. Basically, Essun needed to jump the “empathy gap”, as Jemisin describes, and including stories from her childhood and young adulthood made the book overall more interesting. Continue reading “Building Blogs off of What I Find on the Internet”
Modern Day Slavery
In Syl Anagist, there exists the Briar Patch. The Briar Patch is a place where humanity dies. In it exists thousands of tuners that are “unable to work” and remain alive solely so their power can be harvested (235). Gallat, a conductor of the network, calmly and coldly explains the process in the Briar Patch, “so after system priming, once the generative cycle is established, there’s only an occasional need to reprime” (263). Gallat is numb to the horror of the Briar Patch and does not even address the slaves as people, but as things…objects. At first, reading this passage…I was appalled, but then I quickly realized this is a reflection to the inner workings of our world. Continue reading “Modern Day Slavery”
Cur$!ng
In The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin, the author, includes a variety of cursing to stress certain statements like shit, fuck, and “rust.” Coming across the first curse word in the trilogy, I was actually taken aback, because in my experience, fantasy writers customarily choose to be PG with their language. With the discussion of why Jemisin specifically adds in curse words, I could not help, but be curious behind the science of cursing. Continue reading “Cur$!ng”
Inheritance of the Son
Essun has three children over the course of the The Broken Earth series, yet only her daughter Nassun manages to live beyond infancy. Both sons die at extremely young ages, unable to even truly start living before being cut down. I believe there is importance in that, the the deaths of Corundum and Uche are both meaningful in their own ways, and collectively.
Defining Genre: Cyclical Apocalypse?
Early on within my read of The Fifth Season, I had a personal theory that perhaps the Stillness was our own real world. Following the destruction of the environment, as we currently know it, the organizations and comms within the Stillness rose up. In my eyes, not only was Jemisin’s work incorporating elements of fantasy and science fiction, but also apocalyptic or post apocalyptic fiction. I even had another theory that perhaps the Stillness was an example of post post-apocalyptic fiction. However, as I continued through The Broken Earth series, I realized that the element of the Seasons makes it a mixture of all of these, a cycle of apocalypse, and a cycle of societal collapse. It seemed that I couldn’t find an exact name to describe this.
Obelisks, Stone Eaters, and Lorists: The Many Faces of the Archive (Part One of Two)
There is an order to life in the Stillness*
There is also a continuity. It is difficult for a society to prioritize the preservation of history when the preservation of life itself is such an immediate concern. Yet Hoa’s early assertion that “much of history is unwritten” (The Fifth Season 3) is laden with far more meaning than we could fathom when first starting the series. In my group’s blog post on the 2011 earthquake in Tohoku, Japan, we discussed how art professor Jave Yoshimoto’s documentation of the tragedy in the form of a 30-foot wood carving related to Yaetr Innovator Dibars’ rejected research on Seasons for Seventh University. But the histories recorded in the Sanze universities, and those taught in creche, represent a tiny fraction of the massive banks of memory spread throughout the Stillness in different, less conventional forms. Obelisks, Stone Eaters, and Lorists all serve to preserve pieces of the great history of humankind. They are the unsung archives of Jemisin’s world.
Proactiveness
Essun raised Nassun in a rather forward, non-conventional way in the sense that if Nassun wanted something she should not wait for others to act first, but solely rely on herself. In recollection, in The Obelisk Gate, Nassun remembers that “there has never been anyone to save Nassun. Her mother warned her there never would be if Nassun ever wants to be free of fear, she has no choice but to forge that freedom for herself” (385). In subtle reference to my last post, Imprisonment :/, I love the proactive nature Essun has instilled into Nassun.