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Revelations occur in the strangest of moments. Right in the midst of my procrastination, as my attention span struggles to grasp on my work, I tune into my roommate’s video that’s playing in the background.  “That’s not something I’ve been trained to be attracted to”  flows from her laptop. She’s watching another episode of BKCHAT NYC, as she usually does. This time on the topic of race and attraction. I was halfway through writing another blog post when these words resonated with me.

“That’s not something I’ve been trained to be attracted to”

Continue reading “Laws of Attraction”

Remember the very first blog post I made? Probably. not, but it was centered around Māori mythology and the idea of primordial parental figures. In all honesty, the post was meant as a basis for a thread of connections I’m currently trying to unpack. There were times where it might have seemed contradictory or lacking, so I’m here to explain somethings before I start. I said that Jemisin takes inspiration a lot of different cultures. This inspiration isn’t appropriation, but rather a reference point for growth. Her blog post about creating races clearly states she isn’t interested in using other people’s beliefs or traditions for personal gain. See the rest of my findings as a plausible origin for what we’ve read instead of a concrete backstory. Continue reading “Children of Malice”

On Tuesday, November 20, my friend took me to Buffalo, New York to see the hit Broadway show Hamilton. I had been wanting to see this show for a long time; memorizing the lyrics, and reading about the writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s, process in creating the show. While geeking out after seeing Hamilton and reading as much as I could about it, I realized just how much time, effort, and research it must take artists like him to make some of  the world’s most interesting art. Jemisin also uses her knowledge from other disciplines to create depth in her work. Continue reading “The Research Behind Art”

A passage that struck me while discussing The Stone Sky in class was Nassun’s query into her symbiotic relationship with Schaffa which “she will have already decided that family will do” to define their bond. I began to wonder if family was the same as symbiosis, which typically means different organisms mutually benefitting off one another and what this meant for the relationship between Nassun and Essun.

Continue reading “Parasitic and Symbiotic Relationships”

Amidst the many shocking revelations of The Fifth Season, we came to know our singular protagonist by three names: Damaya, Syenite, and Essun. Since then, the identities of various characters have undergone shifts, some voluntary, some not.  Schaffa and Hoa, too, shift (and Tonkee, though Essun notices that she is in many ways still the same ol’ Binof). Again, I will be drawing on psychologist Robert Jay Lifton’s work in The Protean Self, this time to explore the ways in which this fracturing, this fluidity of self, can be adaptive or regressive. Continue reading “Essun’s Personal Rifting: Fractures in Identity”