(Im)Possibilities

“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.

Continue reading “The Planet is Fine”

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”

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?”

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””

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”

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”