˗ˏˋmollyˊˎ˗

My freshman year in college, I was in a class called "Blackness, Love, and Justice". It was an English class in which we read The Broken Earth trilogy by N K Jemisin and one of our main assignments was to create blog posts about the story and literally anything we could think of, as long as we could relate it back to the story.

I struggled a bit with the vague instructions that were given to me. You may even be able to see my improvement and how I got more comfortable with my own ideas. I quickly decided that this was the class in which I showed the most improvement and I owed it to the blog assignment.

Over the past six years, this class has been on my mind. Both because The Broken Earth Trilogy is THAT GOOD (seriously. You HAVE to read it if you haven't), but also because of the way I was able to ground the fiction of the story to the real world in brand new ways.

In 2022 I started to read much more but still hadn't felt confident enough in my thoughts and feelings about a book to apply this thought process to a book on my own. This year, I have felt more and more confident in myself, in general, and in my opinions and connections while reading.

I'm still a novice, I'm still young. However, that just means that there are still so many more books out there to read for the first time.

Jemisin addresses the challenge of preserving history with the existence of the lorists and their stonelore. The lorists “came only from a race called Regwo–Westcoasters who had sallow-reddish skin and naturally black lips, and who worshipped the preservation of history the way people in less-bitter times worshipped gods” (The Obelisk Gate, 2). As time went on and this race of people were destroyed, lorists kept existing and tinting their lips black in memory of the people of Regwo, though they eventually forgot why.

The theme of forgetting why a civilization does something — or has something–is repeated throughout the series. Hoa describes this same theme with the obelisks. He says,

“In tens of thousands of years, after people have repeatedly forgotten what ‘engines’ are and know the fragments as nothing but ‘obelisks,’ there will be a different name for the thing that rules our lives now. It will be called the Obelisk Gate, which is both more poetic and quaintly primitive. I like that name better” (The Obelisk Gate, 49).

The lorists’ jobs are preserve history and spread the stories to the rest of humanity. Danel is a lorist that tells Essun, “Those of us who come out of the old Lorist families train in hand-to-hand, the arts of war, and so forth. it makes us more useful during Seasons, and in the task of defending knowledge.” She also says, “Soldiers might get a comm through a Season, but storytellers are what kept the Sanze going through seven of them” (The Stone Sky, 221). The lorists are successful in keeping essential knowledge alive to keep humanity alive along with it. They are not successful, however, in keeping the reasons the knowledge exists intact.

I was right, but that’s not what this post is about. After reading two books-worth about the character of Essun, I’ve begun to recognize that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. She corrects people when they use the wrong name for her and yet questions if she is still Essun anymore. Instead of changing who she is again, she does what most of us tend to do in our real world and proceeds to change as a person without completely changing her identity.I was interested in this because of how obvious her transformations were in the past. Essun is born “Damaya” and raised as a non-orogene child. When she finally assumes the position of a proper orogene, she completely changes her identity from “Damaya,” the human/grit, to “Syenite,” the Fulcrum-trained orogene.

“If I pass.” Damaya closes her eyes. She can’t look at him and say this. Not without letting him see the it isn’t right in her eyes. “I picked a rogga name.” He does not chide her on her language. “Have you now?” He sounds pleased. “What?” She licks her lips. “Syenite” (The Fifth Season, 331).

Syenite, in the geology world, is a coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock. Syenite is fairly hard and when it breaks, it shatters. “Even the hardest stone can fracture.  It just takes the right force, applied at the right juncture of angles. A fulcrum of pressure and weakness” (The Fifth Season, 440).

When Syenite needs to hide her orogeny and feign a “normality,” she changes her name to Essun, and with it, herself. She creates a home and a family. She becomes a creche teacher. She starts to become comfortable and, what I think is the most like herself she will ever be able to be.

Until, once again, her life falls apart and she has to start over again, only, this time, a significant part of her life (and herself?), Nassun, is still out in the world connecting her to her older life. On her way to look for her, she runs into the village of Castrima where orogenes and humans live in tandem. Here, Essun grows and changes some more, in both herself and her orogeny. Instead of being a lone sole, like she always seemed to be, Essun becomes part of a community, she says, “This is a community. you will be unified. you will fight for each other. Or I will rusting kill every last one of you” (The Obelisk Gate, 335).

Now that she’s changing again, learning more orogeny, too, she thinks about what she would be called if she were still in the Fulcrum and if she hadn’t gone through everything she has,

“How many rings?” You grimace in distaste, consider trying to explain the “unofficial” rings Alabaster gave you, consider being humble… and then finally you settle for accuracy. “Ten.” Essun Tenring, the Fulcrum would call you now, if the seniors would bother to acknowledge your current name. and if the Fulcrum still existed. For what it’s worth (The Stone Sky, 219).

Needless to say, as her transitions progressed, they became less noticeable. I didn’t notice it until I read a certain quote that I have now lost (if I find it again, I’ll add it in). I also wondered how, maybe in some way, her progression as an orogene and as a person is a form of self-love. She still has some self hatred, but over time, as she’s learning, is it diminishing? I’ll leave you with this excerpt:

In The Broken Earth Series, I feel a lot of love. It may not be obvious, or conventional, but I believe that Essun does feel love. In some cases it may be a relationship between a mother and her child where the love is shown by protecting them, even in the most tragic of ways. In others, Essun’s love may be with a lover: the father of her children, a handsome pirate, or her mentor and best friend. In any case, Essun is surrounded by people that love her and want to protect her, providing this series with depth and heart.

Essun has had three children: a son with Alabaster, Corundum, and a daughter and son with Jija, Nassun and Uche. Throughout The Broken Earth Series, Essun tries her damnedest to protect them from the cruel world she knows all too well, and feels the unimaginable pain that comes with losing a child. In the act of protecting her children and the pain she feels when she fails, I believe she shows her love for them. At the end of The Fifth Season, while she is known as Syenite, the Guardians are trying to take Corundum away, Essun “puts her hand over his mouth and nose, to silence him, to comfort him. She will keep him safe. She will not let them take him, enslave him, turn his body into a tool and his mind into a weapon and his life into a travesty of freedom” (The Fifth Season, 441). Because she covers both his mouth and nose, and maybe because she’s feeling so many emotions at once, Corundum dies at the hands of his mother.

While raising Nassun and Uche, Essun teaches them how to control their orogeny in order to pose as humans in Tirimo without their father knowing to protect them. Essun learned how to do this in the Fulcrum, causing her to use those techniques to teach her children. For the most part, Essun is successful. That is, until Jija realizes that his entire family is comprised of orogenes. when this happens, he kills Uche and takes Nassun away to Found Moon for the slim chance that she can shed her orogeny. Because Essun loves her children, and because she wants to protect them, she teaches them how to conceal their orogeny.

I also see love between Essun and Alabaster. At first, their relationship is purely business, in fact, they hate each other, “‘I don’t like you'” (The Fifth Season, 70), but as they start a life in Allia and have a child together, I see their deeper feelings for each other arise. Innon observes of Syenite, “‘You’re a very good friend, I think,” to which she responds “‘Yes, I rusting am” (The Fifth Season, 357). Over time, Alabaster and Essun become the only people they know that has experienced the things they have, creating an even greater bond. Jemisin has also written her thoughts about these two on her blog that you can find here.

Finally, Hoa and Essun have a kind of love of their own. This is the only one I’ve mentioned where it is explicitly said that they love each other: “I resist the urge to crush his head. ‘I love her, of course.’ There; I’ve managed a civil tone” (The Obelisk Gate, 382), “Better to let Hoa chew you tp pieces with his beautiful teeth; at least you like him love him lo lo lo lo l o v e” (The Obelisk Gate, 372).

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.

The inspiration behind the most popular Broadway show of our generation, Hamilton, was a biography about Alexander Hamilton’s life written by Ron Chernow. Following that, Lin-Manuel Miranda read letters and writings by all of the founding fathers to create the basis behind the characters and to contribute to the catchy lyrics in the show.

In class we have talked about how Jemisin may have used Octavia Butler’s work as inspiration. Dr. McCoy gave the class excerpts from four of Butler’s works, Dawn, Kindred, Wild Seed, and Mind of My Mind, to compare to Jemisin’s writing.

Jemisin also demonstrates a knowledge of geology in her writing. She uses great detail in explaining what an orogene feels in the earth, “Syenite frowns. Her fingers spread and twitch, following the flow and curve of the sesuna. Soft slither of lose schist and sand and organic matter, cool press of solid bedrock, flow and dip” (The Fifth Season, 220).

Jemisin also uses a knowledge of rocks when naming the Fulcrum orogenes. For example, Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving. Alabaster, as a character, is soft when it comes to his children,

“While she stares at him in chilled realization, he even slaps his knee with one hand. Still laughing, because what he wants to do is destroy everything in sight. And if his half-dead, half-grown son could touch off a supervolcano, there’s really no telling what his father could do if he set his mind to it. Or even by accident, if his control slips for a moment” (The Fifth Season, 148).

As a character, Alabaster is used for carving by the Fulcrum. Toward the end of The Fifth Season and throughout The Obelisk Gate, he expresses his anger toward the Fulcrum and how they controlled him and raised him to be their tool. He says,

“Orogenes built the Fulcrum, […] We did it under threat of genocide, and we used it to buckle a collar around our own necks, but we did it. We are the reason Old Sanze grew so powerful and lasted so long, and why it still half-rules the world, even if no one will admit it. We’re the ones who’ve figured out just how amazing our kind can be, if we learn how to refine the gift we’re born with,” (The Fifth Season, 418).

What started off as a quiet and ordinary day turned into one of the most notorious natural disasters ever recorded in history. But, how exactly? On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on the Richter Scale took place at a depth of 18.6 miles, in the northwestern side of Japan. Although the epicenter was located some 80 miles east of the city of Sendai, the effects of the great earthquake were felt around the world, from Norway’s fjords to Antarctica’s ice sheets. The Japan Earthquake also called the Great Sendai Earthquake or the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami of 2011 had a combined total of 22,000 deaths and missing person reports. Deaths were caused by the initial earthquake and tsunami and by post-disaster health conditions as a result of other life-threatening factors. Devastatingly enough, Japan had 54 nuclear reactors with two under construction and 17 power plants which produced about 30% of Japan’s electricity. From the nationwide electrical damage, there was material damage from the earthquake and tsunami that estimated to cost 25 trillion yen (roughly 300 billion). As of February 2017, residents are still recovering from the disaster. Because of the cooling failure at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which resulted in a level-7 nuclear meltdown and release of radioactive material, the damages are yet to be fully restored. This earthquake and its secondary effects were so powerful that it even caused changes in the earth’s axis. The legacy of this earthquake will linger for the years to come for its residents and the rest of the world.

Now, art. There’s a trend in human history of using art to pass on impactful information. Art becomes a medium through which we can share knowledge, express reverence and even remind others of something that once was. Following the trend of civilizations past who used artforms like sculptures, carvings, pottery etc., the Great Tohoku Earthquake has resulted not only in long-lasting consequences, but also in art mediums which have captured the meaning of its experience to victims and witnesses. Jave Yoshimoto created a forty-two-inch by thirty-foot, hand-painted scroll which shows the effects of the earthquake and tsunami, as well as community response to destruction in its wake. It is titled “Baptism of concrete estuary.” A portion of the scroll appears below.

One example of this history captured in art is its visual depictions.

Yoi Kawakubo took a different approach to the depiction of Japan’s tragedy, and more specifically of its nuclear consequences. Instead of traditional artforms, Kawakubo buried photographic film in an area of Fukushima, where it absorbed and displays radiation exposure. This piece is titled “When the mist takes off the suns.”

As a way of capturing the more immediate consequences of this seismic event, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper captured the photograph below, which shows toppled tombstones. These disturbed grave markers were a direct result of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and had still not been righted when the photo was taken five years later.

Jemisin tackles this concept of using art as a means of reminding people of significant events in history through different mediums in the Broken Earth Trilogy. This can be seen in the preservation of stonelore, or even the ancient creation of the plutonic engines—which were initially made as art— but looking at more obvious depictions it’s easy to forget that stone eaters look like sculptures. Stone eaters, besides appearing as statues and artistic mediums, are also embodiments of an archaic history. Some of their memories, though not perfect, span centuries and even millennia. Alabaster introduces us to this in The Obelisk Gate when he says, “they’ve been fighting this war much, much, longer than you or I. Some of them from the very beginning…They can’t die, so…yeah” (167). This gives the stone eaters a massive historic significance for the world Jemisin has created. Representationally, they are the most accurate—though still biased by human folly—perception of the true history of the Stillness than what’s been recorded and rewritten and destroyed.

Assessing the decision to grant this supreme knowledge to individuals who look like art leads us to critique another decision which lies in the selection of who is given access to this history. In terms of Hoa and Essun’s relationship we are told that he attaches himself to her from the earliest book in the trilogy. This is stated in The Obelisk Gate during an Interlude when Lerna questions Hoa’s devotion to Essun and Hoa says, “I love her, of course” (Jemisin 382). We know that not everyone in the Stillness is aware of stone eaters and so access to their knowledge is limited. So then, the fact that at least one motivator for sharing this knowledge is love speaks volumes on what art means for us as a civilization.

From destruction, we reconstruct; from harm, we sustain; through art, we love (?).

On Wednesday, October 3rd, I attended a Food Safety Talk podcast recording at the recommendation of Dr. McCoy. While I was there, the speakers answered a question about how long imperishable food can last and when we should be worried about it. This reminded me of Chapter 9 in N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season where Alabaster gets poisoned by badly canned food and I was curious as to how accurate Jemisin’s description of faulty canning practices could be. Turns out, she likely did some research.

When Alabaster is briefly paralyzed after eating some bad food Syenite recalls, “When she was a grit, she did kitchen duty sometimes, and every once in a while they would open a jar of fruit or vegetables that had gone bad. The funky ones, those that had cracked or come partially open, were so foul-smelling that the cooks would have to open windows and set some grits on fanning duty to get the stench out. But far worse, Syen had learned, were the jars that didn’t crack. The stuff inside them looked fine; opened, it didn’t smell bad. the only warning of danger was a little buckling of the metal lid” (The Fifth Season, Jemisin, 169). As a grit, Syenite learns that a faulty canning job can turn the contents of a jar into poison.

I decided to look it up. The CDC says that faulty canning techniques can cause botulism, “A rare but potentially deadly illness caused by a poison most commonly produced by a germ called clostridium botulinum.” Additionally, the CDC says that botulism “can affect your nerves, paralyze you, and even cause death.” Other symptoms of botulism include double and/or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, Difficulty swallowing, a thick-feeling tongue, dry mouth, and muscle weakness. Alabaster certainly experienced, what I would say is, the worst of the symptoms.