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“Portrait of my Gender as [Inaudible]” by Meg Day was such a fascinating read. Perhaps it is because the title and the way it calls attention to audio, but I was looking for the theme of silence as I read the poem.

After I finished reading the poem, I wanted to know a little bit more about the author and why they wrote this poem, so I looked up the article that is attached above. Fascinatingly enough, it seems as though Day purposely made this poem difficult to pin down in terms of concrete meaning:

“Meg Day, whose 2014 book Last Psalm at Sea Level won the prestigious Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize, is a poet whose work is difficult to pin down in terms of style or subject. In fact, that might be the point: a self-identified member of the LGBTQ community, Day often focuses on the interstitial nature of bodies and identity,” the article says.

I love the thought of Day intentionally writing their poems with a lack of clarity in their writing. They are writing in the in between space, not needing labels or concrete definitions.

Furthermore, in regards to audio and silence, the article quotes Day’s explanation:

“‘[It] came out of my frustration with closed captioning, and the way that closed captioning is evidence of sound—but oftentimes it’s evidence of sound that people can’t hear, the irony of which is hilarious to me,” she said, referring to captions that deem something “inaudible.’”

I have never thought about how ironic the idea of closed captioning is. They are a representation of a silent sound.

So, what does it mean to be a silent sound in society? Personally, I don’t think that it means that you have no impact. Actually, I think it means the opposite. I think that it means that you are a powerful force that is working in small spaces, making changes that affect one person at a time. At least, that is my interpretation of the poem. Others’ may be different, but I guess that is Day’s goal.

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Photos by Dana Maxson

Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., director of Fordham's Poets Out Loud reading series, opened the Feb. 26 event with a few meaningful words about how the organization goes about selecting its readers:

"The quality of the poetry is always the main criterion," she told the audience, "But tonight's reading also fulfills one of POL's real aims: a commitment to representing a range of styles, ethnicities, and sexualities."

Meg Day and Sharon Wang, the evening's featured poets, embody both of those ideals-excellence of craft and a commitment to representation-in personal and unique ways.

Meg Day, whose 2014 book Last Psalm at Sea Level won the prestigious Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize, is a poet whose work is difficult to pin down in terms of style or subject. In fact, that might be the point: a self-identified member of the LGBTQ community, Day often focuses on the interstitial nature of bodies and identity. And as a deaf poet-there were two American Sign Language interpreters on hand Tuesday night-Day also tackles issues of access and interpretation.

Take, for instance, "Portrait of My Gender as Inaudible," a new poem that Day introduced by noting: "[It] came out of my frustration with closed captioning, and the way that closed captioning is evidence of sound-but oftentimes it's evidence of sound that people can't hear, the irony of which is hilarious to me," she said, referring to captions that deem something "inaudible." The poem concludes with this almost ineffable image:
I made a photograph of my name
It was a shadow in a field and I put my shadow in it
You've met me halfway between the door to our bedroom
And the other we know is real only because you are always gesturing, "There it is." You can't hear me, but I'm there
Day prefaced their next poem with a brief history of the Americans with Disabilities Act, explaining that it "states that reasonable accommodation is all that the government has to provide for you if you're disabled." Day continued: "Reasonable accommodation is really just trying, like, 'Well if you're trying to provide access that's enough, that's reasonable." The poem, aptly titled, "Reasonable Accommodation," begins:
I want a world that clicks into place like my molars
When I wake up my teeth are worn down from the night I thought I could hone my mind until intellect and emotion were a single organ
The way a snake's motion comes from the musculature of its entire body, and when it moves
There is no part of it that has not moved.
The evening continued with Sharon Wang, who earned her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and won the Kundiman Poetry Prize in 2016. Tuesday night's reading was co-sponsored by Kundiman, an organization dedicated to cultivating Asian-American creative writing that holds its annual retreat at Fordham's Rose Hill campus.

Wang's work is often concerned with the natural world, the sense of touch, and loss. As Dubrow described it, "Her emphasis on what is unattainable is reflected in how often many of her titles refer to elegy, those poems of loss and death."

Wang read both from a new collection of epistolary poems and from the book that earned her the Kundiman Prize, Republic of Mercy. The first poem she read, titled "Dear Sentient Being," set the thematic tone for all that was to follow, with its descriptions of nature that conflate the natural world and the human body:

Wang wound down the evening with an elegy called "Mea Culpa," a selection of which reads:

The event was also sponsored by the FCLC Dean's Office, the Fordham English Department, and the Axe-Houghton Foundation, with additional support from the Gerald M. Quinn Library. It was funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

The next Poets Out Loud event is on Monday, April 8.

-Dane Gebauer

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At Poets Out Loud, A Range of Backgrounds and Experiences

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Photos by Dana Maxson Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., director of Fordham's Poets Out Loud reading series, opened the Feb. 26 event with a few meaningful words about how the organization goes about selecting its readers: "The quality of the poetry is always the main criterion," she told the audience, "But tonight's reading also fulfills one of POL's real aims: a commitment to representing a range of styles, ethnicities, and sexualities."

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I knew I was a god when you could not agree on my name

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I knew I was a god when you could not agree on my name

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So what I really like about this poem is that it seemingly plays into an ongoing internet meme that says that queer people (specifically asexuals) are actually fae-folk. But no, I really can't explain to you where this came from or how it started. The internet is a wonderful and mysterious place.

Anyway, this poem reminded me a lot of Freshwater and the idea of deities in human bodies. Apparently there's just something really appealing about claiming to be immortal after trying to explain your sexuality/gender to people for the thousandth time?

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This poem is actually included in the poetry anthology we're reading for my Native lit class for next week! It's nice to see some cross over between the two classes as I feel like Native writing often includes more conversation around gender, gender roles, and how identity converges with those ideas than a lot of other communities' writing.

This is one of those poems where when I first start reading it, the lack of punctuation drives me crazy and it's all I can focus on because I'm pausing at the wrong moment or putting phrases together when they should be separated. But then as you get further into the poem and you sort of fall into sync with the writer's voiced, you notice it less and less. And the sort of tangential way it jumps from thought to thought in a stream of consciousness starts to feel natural as you lean into the form (or maybe that's just my own ADHD brain appreciating thoughts laid out like my own).

It's so easy to get lost in the form of the poem, that you could almost miss the desperate anxiety that is actually being conveyed. It starts off subtle with the not wanting to be "anywhere near" their phone that my brain brushed it off at first - assuming it meant they were doing some sort of "device cleanse" like I hear from my best friend so often when she gets overwhelmed by social media. It isn't until I get to the text messages, the desperate cries for reassurance sent out into the void, that I realize that the speaker is really avoiding their phone because they're afraid they'll get bad news. And with this realization comes the further realization that the disjointed thoughts in the first several stanzas, the tangential jump from topic to topic, is the speaker avoiding thinking about what they're so worried about - desperately clinging to anything that pops into their head to avoid their own worry.

The rest of the poem after that seems to unravel all of the anxious feelings the speaker has clearly been holding back for too long. Their thoughts on the historical Stonewall Riots that fought for civil rights for the queer community and the legacy of those days - the violence glazed over with irreverent t-shirts, the POCs behind the movement covered up with white, nonthreatening gays that Hollywood says are more likable, more sellable (or maybe that's partially my own thoughts getting mixed up in the poem).

Then their thoughts bounce back to the moment at hand - the poem that's been commissioned that couldn't matter less to them in the moment, with everything else going on. And again, we round into distraction. Because they need this money. They need to write the poem that's already been paid for because they have their own money worries, because everything cost something in this country, but that's hard to think about too, so instead they start thinking about architecture and stone mining. Which leads back to family and heritage, and much too close to what they're already avoiding. So they hop again, to pop culture and music. A never ending cycle of distraction and worry.

Or maybe that's me projecting onto the poem again. Hard to say with these poems that speak to the societal exhaustion we're all feeling these days.

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This is the second novel this semester that I'm reading that uses the 2nd person, and the first time, I slogged through that book, struggling every step of the way because the character the author forced me to inhabit was so unlikable and made decisions to contrary to basic reason that I was constantly pulled out of the action by my own brain rebelling against the idea that I would do something so stupid. This time, it has been a lot easier for me to step into the character's shoes when Jemisin turned to 2nd person narration, and I'm trying to figure out why exactly that is.

Is it because the character we embody, Essen, is a woman? I don't think that's it, though it is easier to inhabit the thoughts of a character who doesn't objectify every woman they encounter. Is it because she's more "likeable" than the character of the other book? I don't think that's it. For one thing, I don't know that she is more likeable. And besides that, the unlikeable characters are usually my favorites.

Honestly, I think what it comes down to is simply that Essen makes the choices that we all like to think we'd make in these sorts of doomsday scenarios. She's level headed; she thinks first then acts; she's a survivalist. So I like being in her head, because it makes me feel like maybe I am too.

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I had a realization while reading this piece that has helped me finally understand just what it is about psychoanalysis that bothers me. But before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am endlessly fascinated by psychology, the development of the field, and the different theories surrounding it. I could spend days upon days just diving deeper and deeper into some of these different theories and picking them apart - just for the fun of it.

But this is the first time I've sat down and read through the progression of the movement in quite a few years. I would say, the first time since I've really begun to fully understand my own mental health (if I can even make that claim) and become more active online in various mental health based communities (neuro-divergent groups, autism activist groups, trauma groups, etc). And for the first time it really struck me what was missing in all of these theories when you read through them. And that's the good it can do for people.

Sure, Freud had Dora, which was his "proof" that his theory worked. But after that, it all spins off into a subculture all its own that seems to be theorizing and complicating and uncomplicating the state of the human mind for the sole purpose of . . . doing so. It's so human focused, development focused, and yet, actual humans don't seem to play very heavily in any of it. Just conjecturing. And again, I say this as someone who can get behind a lot of what the theories say, and as someone who loves to view different stories through these lenses and pick them apart.

It just really struck me reading through this that actual people were strangely absent. I had been reading through it trying to put my finger on what about it was sitting wrong with me, reading over and over on different parts of the theories and their originators, looking for whatever bit was giving me this feeling. Until finally, I realized it wasn't something in the theories that bothered me. It was what wasn't there. All of the vast generalizations, lumping humans into categories based on their age and gender alone, as if there aren't other complicating factors, as if the basic family structure is the beginning and end of all life.

And all of this is not to say that I think that these hugely famous analytical thinkers had no real patients upon which they tested their theories. I know they did and that the treatments of these different theories monumentally changed the landscape of mental health care - both for the better and the worse. It's just very odd that when we talk about these theories, we only ever talk about them in generalizations.

But then, how else would we talk about them? I guess I'm just so used to the discourse happening today around mental health - the burden that those suffering from the conditions themselves have carried in finding a way to survive on their own when the traditional healthcare framework has failed them. All of the big epiphanies I've had in treating my mental health have not come from traditional health experts. In fact, my therapists have often set me back or delegitimized what I know to be true, whereas the online communities filled with people who have lived the same experiences have always been full of stories and support. In comparison, psychoanalytic theory is just downright cold. I can't help but wonder, knowing how much the so-called "experts" are missing today - how much did these theories, with all of their generalizations and "outward-looking-in studies" miss?

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I appreciated the reading for this chapter, as it did a great job situating the historical context of a lot of these concepts. I was not familiar with really any of this before and I especially enjoyed the part that discussed the impact on different racial groups.

Specifically, I enjoyed the section on African-American culture and the work of Du Bois.

“We see this beginning to happen in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois who, in 1903, put forward the idea of ‘double consciousness.’ This was a provocative idea, one that emphasized not only a consciousness of racial difference but also a sense of radical internal division, a sense of ‘two-ness’ that Du Bois understood in terms of a doubling of the soul, of the struggle to be human in America” (35).

I first became familiar with Du Bois and Double Consciousness during my freshman year of college. I was in an African-American Literature course and we read The Souls of Black Folk. It was the first book of that kind that I have ever read (I can admit that my secondary education was extremely white-washed). I was blown away by the honesty in the text- which was such an incredible risk at the time and in current times. Fast forwarding, I then chose to complete my senior thesis on the way that Du Bois’ concept of Double Consciousness has been played out in the white Evangelical Church in the past and today. All of that being said, I ate, slept, and drank researching this topic for quite a while.

It is so important that we all understand the concept of double consciousness and the veil. What identities are we forcing in and out of other people? What are we forcing people to change? What are we forcing people to get rid of? What are our expectations of an “American?”

These questions can apply to our broader course as a whole. As we look at concepts of gender and sexuality, what assumptions are we bringing to the table? Are we ourselves looking at these concepts through the veil?

Since Du Bois’ publication, there have been many spin-offs of double consciousness. Triple consciousness refers to African-American women. It has also been applied to different races and genders.

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Honestly, this article confused me quite a bit. It went through a lot of psychological and scientific concepts that I am not familiar with and it was tough for me to follow. What I tried to do while reading was focusing the individual concepts/developments/etc. and learning the characteristics of each.

The one that caught my attention was the mirror. I thought that it was fascinating.

“Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’ of childhood development… [argues] that children (typically in their second year) think they see themselves as an entire being, fully present before themselves (as in a mirror), disconnected from the oceanic unity of the maternal body” (184).

Until reading this article, I had never heard of the mirror stage. Without knowing that term, however, I feel like the concept makes complete sense.

When you think of a two-year-old, they live life in their own little bubble. When they are hungry, they get fed. When they make a mess, they get cleaned. When they need to go somewhere, they are taken there. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that they are children, I would almost say that they are selfish. Their world really only revolves around them and their needs. They don’t yet have the complex emotions to understand empathy or sacrifice.

Now, looking at in with regard to the mirror stage, it makes sense that this would be the time that the children begin to distance themselves from the mother. It is a form of rebirth, of defining oneself. Although this is not always realistic, it is what we do.

I feel as though we are constantly on a search for independence (but at the same time, trying to avoid loneliness). We want our own world separate from what got us there and, sometimes, that is to our own detriment.

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There are great points presented in the posts on this topic written by Lauren and Kaitlyn. I think that an additional question that came to mind for me while reading “Culture, Gender, History,” was how we have seen the thinking on difference change over time. Are we at a point where we feel that we are truly moving forward with acceptance and embracing all differences, or do the divides that we have as societies today force us backward in our progress toward inclusion?

One passage that stood out to me at the end of this chapter was:

“The tendency in these theories of culture, identity, sexuality, and historical revisionism is to rethink the possibilities of human agency in a way that refuses to foreclose participation of any group or individual on the basis of invidious stereotypes or categories of social and cultural exclusion” (39).

Lauren, you mentioned the idea of an identity crisis, which I think is very relevant to this discussion. We do struggle to find exactly which group to join that matches our identities, and then logically, we focus more on the differences that exist among all identities. I think that although this may continue to be a struggle for our global society, our thinking on difference could maybe function independently from the sense of belonging with our individual identities. How does everyone else feel about this? Can we question our identity, but continue moving forward in our progress toward inclusion? Or do both have to be present together for real progress to occur?

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It's super interesting to me how I picked my classes for my masters based upon what fit into my schedule the best and which interested me the most, and yet I've somehow seemingly followed the timeline that is laid out in this section. I know Kaitlyn said she hadn't seen the whole thing laid out like this before, but I have seen it in chunks just over the passed couple of semesters!

One thing that this section and Kaitlyn's response to it really got me thinking about: In an ever-increasingly globalized world, will we hit a point where everyone is struggling to find their place and feeling like they exist in more than one world at once?

What I've found as I read more and more post-colonial texts in context is that the one thing they all seem to have in common is this sort of homelessness of community. Characters struggle to feel like there's anyone else truly like them that they can wholly connect with, and they are often forced to create multiple versions of themselves depending on who they are interacting with (i.e. code-switching). But the world isn't going back to distinctly isolated communities anytime soon.

The internet has globalized the world in ways that is both similar and dissimilar to colonization in that in our modern society it's hard to get by (anywhere on earth) without some sort of interaction online. Covid-19 just exacerbated these issues. Most of the cultural mixing that happens as a result of the online world is less forced than the cultural erasure of colonialism, but it's there nonetheless.

But the question that this really brings up for me is whether this type of identity split is less damaging to the psyche (to society's psyche as well as the individual's) than a more forced version?

Not that I think the world should be less diverse. Ultimately I think that we find new ways of belonging, and even have opportunities for found-families that are a better fit for us than a simple cultural fit might have been in the past. But we all know people who are less willing to interact with a diverse society than others - people who wish it would "just go back the way it used to be". And even though I largely see it as themselves doing the damage they're experiencing, there is damage. So I just wonder, a generation two down the line, what are we going to start seeing as a result of that?

These are the things I think about when my brain gets too melt-y to do real work.

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Because it's Friday, and none of us has the motivation or brain power left for work, I posed this question to my coworker who is working on becoming a psychologist.

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This poem was extremely powerful. Julian Talamantez Brolaski’s “Stonewall to Standing Rock” followed a meshing of emotions in a form of writing similar to stream-of-consciousness.

As I was reading, I felt as though I was in the middle of a panic attack. I have never had a true panic attack before, but reading this felt similar to things that I have heard about panic attacks. Thoughts were scattered, everything was happening extremely fast, it felt panicked, and everything was of utmost importance. Emotions were definitely at a height.

It was interesting to see the author jump from topic to topic but letting it all seem connected. The way that they wrote also changed as the panic heightened.

I think this form of emotional writing helped to convey the importance of the topics being discussed. Also, writing in a less formal manner made it more familiar and easy to connect to.

The following line really caught my attention:

“can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending

instead just tell them to honor the treaty”

I teach a Social Justice Literature class, and we often talk about actions that matter. Sometimes, it appears as though people want surface-level fixes. For examples, as Brolaski states, they make sacred ground into a national park, memorializing it. Sure, that’s a nice gesture (I guess?)

But, instead of doing a nice, public gesture to gain attention, can’t they simply listen to what the native people to that land are asking them to do?

By taking that public action, a check is placed on their to-do list. They can move on- the issue has been addressed. But, in reality, it has not been addressed. At least not in the way that those involved want it to be addressed.

As always, voices are silenced and entire populations are left behind.

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There were many ways in which race seemed much more significant in this novel than gender. But that doesn't mean that there weren't some great examples of the treatment of gender within the text.

I found the idea of "Breeders" within the society of particular interest. The actual use-caste that denotes Breeder isn't explored much within the novel and was a little confusing to me since it seems that there isn't an societal issue with having children - people in other castes have children, so I don't understand the need for Breeders. The one clear example we get of this is within the Oregene community itself. Syen and Alabaster are forced to conceive a child together due to their standing within the group and the power they wield, and though no one physically forces the act upon them, it's clear that neither want to be party to the act. Alabaster himself confesses to being through this process at least 12 times previously.

And yet, it isn't Alabaster that carries the brunt of the burden. He struggles, for sure, with the fact that he's been forced into parenthood and that he is entirely helpless to protect any of these children from fates worse than death. But I found it interesting that the book never addressed the added trauma to the women in this situation. Because after the act of impregnation, Alabaster's job is done. But for the women like Syen, the low-level ringers with promise who are forced to bear children to get ahead in status, the trauma of being forced to carry and deliver a child that they then must give up is almost entirely ignored.

This is a trend I see in many novels when it comes to childbearing. The idea that a woman would not naturally take to carrying and delivering a child is nonexistent. It's simply seen as a non-topic whether because it would be too much to add to the plot or because the author wasn't sure how to handle it. So when the idea of "breeding" and being forced to breed to strengthen a genetic mutation was brought up in this book which handles so many sensitive topics with seeming ease, it was a little disappointing that this was never discussed at all. Sure Syen resents the situation she's forced into. But her resentment is focused much more on the act than on the 9 months in which her body will be forcibly used for incubation and the traumatic act of giving birth followed by having the child ripped from her arms. All of that is but a passing thought to her, as if it is no more remarkable than her other bodily functions.

With all of that said, this was really the only way in which this novel disappointed me. I was delighted by its incorporation of queer identities in a way that normalized them. The way Essen notices Tonkee's gender nonconformity but never questions the woman's gender identity. How it's hinted at that the Fulcrum disapproves of same sex coupling (likely because it cannot result in children) but how it is entirely unremarkable to every other character in the novel. Even how the polyamorous relationship that Syen and Alabaster share with Innon is accepted without comment. Syen wonders at the fact that she ended up in this relationship with Alabaster of all people, but she never questions the fact that there are three of them. That, she says, feels perfectly normal.

Really, there was so much to love in this novel for the way it rejected societal norms and reaffirmed so many identities which we know have existed throughout the rise and fall of many societies but which our current society tries to villainize. I only wish that it didn't fall into the same tired trope of post-apocalyptic society that ignores the very real struggle of childbearing. I wish it didn't treat it as such a given to the act of being female especially since we know it wouldn't play into all the female characters' personhood, and especially in the dire circumstances all the characters find themselves in.

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As I was reading this novel, especially at the beginning, I found it really hard to keep up with it. There were so many unfamiliar words that were presented as familiar with no explanation. I found myself constantly flipping back and forth to the glossary and, even by the end of the novel, I was not entirely sure of the meaning of some of the words. Is that a person? Place? Concept? Something I don't even understand?

I loved the above article from NPR that praises Jemisin's creativity and attention to detail. It is incredibly impressive that the author was not only able to come up with this fantasy world, but remained consistent in the story telling. Furthermore- this was not Jemisin's first novel that was this extensive!

I will post more thoughts on the novel specifically, I just wanted to draw attention to this.

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There are two ways to look at the kind of fantasy novels that come with big glossaries at the end. Negatively, they're self-indulgent exercises in building fictional worlds, with the author fixating on the sheer quantity of settings and characters to the exclusion of all else. Positively, fantasy-novel glossaries help the reader keep track of an intricate clockwork of imaginary peoples, places, and things - and that intricacy actually pays off.

In N. K. Jemisin's new novel, The Fifth Season, the payoff is astounding. Sure, there's a whopping glossary at the end of the book - two of them, actually - but that simply underscores how much sumptuous detail and dimensionality she's packed into her premise. The story takes place in a land called the Stillness, a tragically ironic name, seeing as how the geography is in constant, violent flux. The entire world undergoes apocalypses on a periodic basis, as regular as weather patterns. In the fractured landscape that houses the sprawling city of Yumenes, that instability has given civilization an equally volatile reality. A caste system scars it. Science and magic have uneasily mixed. And Essun is a small-town schoolteacher whose family has been brutally ripped apart from within.

Jemisin has built similarly complex worlds before, most notably in her multiple-award-nominated The Inheritance Trilogy. The Fifth Season is the first book in Jemisin's latest series, The Broken Earth, and it's already off to an equally promising start. Essun - grief-stricken after her husband suddenly kills their small son and flees with their daughter - begins a quest that starts out as a rescue but becomes something else entirely, as a horrific new cataclysm bears down on the Stillness.

Whether volcanic, seismic, atmospheric, geomagnetic, or manmade, each new disaster is called a Season, and the next one threatens to be the most devastating in recent history. History itself has gone through numerous disruptions, creating an ambiguity about the ancient era that comes to bear on Essun's own shadow-shrouded past and present. Not to mention those of Syen and Damaya, characters of varying castes whose storylines overlap with Essun's in a deeply clever and affecting way that drives home the mechanisms of power and oppression at work in vast backdrop of The Stillness. The Fifth Season isn't a straightforward book any more than it's an upbeat one, but it's stronger for that. And Jemisin maintains a gripping voice and an emotional core that not only carries the story through its complicated setting, but sets things up for even more staggering revelations to come in future installments of the series.

One of the book's big strengths, and big surprises, is the secret that its multiple point-of-view characters keep. It's a smart demonstration of structure and suspense on Jemisin's part, but it's also a sophisticated metaphor for the essence of the Stillness, a mystifying flux of geography and society that no collection of glossary entries can fully define. "The ending of one story is just the beginning of another," she writes early on, and that's just one of many sly snippets of foreshadowing that wind up feeling profound by book's end.

The Stillness is a study in geological upheaval; in their own way, so are its people.With The Fifth Season, Jemisin brilliantly illustrates the belief that, yes, imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy - but also that every character is a world unto herself.

Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A.V. Club, a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel Taft 2012.

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'Fifth Season' Embraces The Scale And Complexity Of Fantasy

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There are two ways to look at the kind of fantasy novels that come with big glossaries at the end. Negatively, they're self-indulgent exercises in building fictional worlds, with the author fixating on the sheer quantity of settings and characters to the exclusion of all else.

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Identity and Masking in The Fifth Season

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Identity and Masking in The Fifth Season

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Although gender does of course play into this, identity was such a huge part of The Fifth Season that I really thought it warranted its own post. It really felt like this whole novel was a testament to the resilience of humanity and our ability to adapt to changing situations in order to survive. Because of course, none of the changes that Essun makes to her identity throughout her life are really her choice.

As the child Damaya, she was a product of her upbringing. And, it should be noted, it was an upbringing that denied (through ignorance) who she really was. And while she was allowed to develop somewhat of a stubborn nature, she's still quick to reprimand herself and correct her behavior when she goes against what adults tell her. And then when she is brought to the Fulcrum, this deferring to those in charge (now the Guardians rather than merely adults) is beaten into her until it becomes a knee-jerk reaction, and she becomes what she needs to to survive: Syenite.

Arguable the time we spend with her as Syen is the time when she is most allowed to be herself. But it's only after an untold number of years under the Fulcrum's control and manipulation. So what we see is Syenite finding herself again, buried underneath everything that has been done to her. The bits and pieces we get to see of her real personality come out mostly as that same string of stubbornness, impatience that causes her to snap at others. But much of that, even is born from the anxiety of trying to maintain a façade.

And then of course, we end with Essun who, though we end the novel with her, may be the best mask that she wears throughout her life. Perhaps this is because she created this mask entirely herself, out of necessity rather than force? Or perhaps it's just that she has had more practice at this point in maintaining a mask.  What we do know is that somewhere along the way, she has allowed herself to truly love her children in a way that we did not see with Syenite. She's softer somehow, even if she's more closed off. And either way, toward the end of the novel, as she is forced to live life on the run as an orogene once again, that mask begins to crumble, and that same streak of stubbornness and impatience comes back out. At which point, even she begins to question which parts of her are real and which parts are a mask. She's been wearing masks her whole life, so that now that she may no longer need them, she's not quite sure who she actually is.

I think it's no coincidence that identity is treated as such a cut and dry thing in the novel. Everyone has their use-castes and their assigned duties. They know who they're going to be when they grow up, what they're going to learn, and how their lives are going to be lived. Which is in high contrast to the unpredictability of the land (perhaps it is because of the unpredictability of the land). There is little room left in these lives for anyone to question who they are or where they belong - and yet, when a orogene child is discovered, they are taken from their predictable lives and thrust into an entirely different path, one in which they are forced to see themselves as less than human. In a world where everyone knows exactly what they're destined to do and to be, only the orogenes seem to have any amount of uncertainty. For the orogenes there is the chance to fail, and the consequences of failing haunt every orogene child. For them it is a task of masking and doing so well enough to succeed, or certain death.

I hold no delusions about why this novel with this particular concept is so appealing to me, as the grown adult of a child who was forced to mask to fit in, to make friends, to pretend that their home-life was like the home-life of everyone else. But it does strike me that this book came to me in a time when I'm only just beginning to understand my own neurodivergence and when I'm starting on a journey to get diagnosed as autistic.

I've been doing a lot of exploring around the idea of masking and how it's taken on as a survival skill by neurodivergent kids or kids who have experienced trauma lately, and Essun's journey throughout this book could be held up as a picture perfect metaphor of the experience every neurodivergent kid goes through just trying to exist in a world that is not kind to them. You either learn to mask on your own well enough to go undetected, and lose parts of yourself that you're never able to fully explore because you're trying so hard to fit in, or you fail at masking, get discovered, and get put onto a separate path from everyone else - one that often proves to do more damage than good, and whose only goal is to make you useful to society. And even when you are deemed useful or even competent, there's always people watching over you. Once you've been put on that separate path, you're on that separate path for life, never quite considered good enough, trustworthy enough to function completely on your own.

I'm probably (definitely) projecting some of my fear about getting diagnosed onto the book, but the metaphor reads true. And I haven't even gotten to my contemplations of the fact that everyone in the novel - whether light skinned or dark skinned - is described with physical traits we traditionally associate with black people. And how all of this ties in with the black experience in America and how masking is required just as much for the survival of them and other minority groups as it is for the disabled.

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Obviously, the theme of identity is a big one in this novel as the main character inhabits three different names and identities throughout the novel.

This theme began to catch my attention throughout chapter 3. I have grouped together some of the quotes from that chapter that stood out to me:

“You’re still trying to decide who to be. The self you’ve been lately doesn’t make sense anymore… So you decide not to wait for death to come. It is coming for you… You pause. Revise that thought to something that better befits the woman you’ve chosen to be… Stupid, stupid woman. Death was always here. Death is you” (42-60).

“Never forget what you are” (60).

I love the agency that our main character takes with her identity throughout the novel. She is not a bystander in the fluidity of her identity. Instead, she is the one evoking the change and evolution of who she is. She is deciding who to be. She is experiencing the events and trauma that inform her identity. She makes active decisions. She has chosen her identity, but she never forgets who she was in the past or who she will be in the future.

I think about this in regards to the teenagers that I teach in high school. So many people teach teenagers that they are too young to make decisions for themselves. Now, there are a lot of times when I agree with that statement. But, teenagers have a lot more emotional intelligence than people give them credit for. Teenagers are actively searching for their identity, yet people tell them that they are too young to do that.

Just today, I was reading an NPR article about a high school getting sued for its policies on pronouns. The school provided the option for students to choose to go by a name and pronoun of their choice while in school without parental permission. The parents of a specific student claimed that this was not allowed for a minor and they chose to sue the school for providing students with this option. In part of the complaints, they said that it took away parental control.

Relating back to the novel, how do we provide space for students to comfortably explore their identities the way that our main character(s) did?

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Gonna out myself as an absolute nerd here . . .

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Gonna out myself as an absolute nerd here . . .

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If anyone else here has watched any of Steven Universe, I'm sure you noticed the similarities between the characters (and their oft-gem-inspired names) in both and even similarities between the Broken Earth and the gem-influenced areas of Earth in Steven Universe. Even the prevalence of diverse queer characters and the normalizing of their identities. I wonder if one influenced the other at all.

Steven Universe first aired in 2013 - though it took a while for the actual universe to get fleshed out.

It first occurred to me of course with the use of gem names throughout, but I brushed it off as wishful thinking. However, the similarities get harder to ignore when both worlds have things like floating obelisks which are largely ignored and accepted as normal by all of the characters.

I can't find any evidence online of admitted influence by either creator so it seems like it must be just that. But because they both came on to the scene around the same time, I like to think that they influenced each other - cause I love a good conversation between art.

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I found the message in this poem to be very impactful. The idea of existing as an identity that is inaudible is one that undoubtedly influences the reader to consider the ways in which society encourages and accepts an inaudible presence. The following quote in particular stood out to me:

“I made a photograph of my name:

There was a shadow in a field

& I put my shadow in it. You

can’t hear me, but I’m there.”

I have a couple of takeaways from this passage. One, I feel that it enforces the reality that there are way too many individuals who feel like they are unseen. Their voices are not heard, identities are not acknowledged, and our society suffers as a result of this lack of representation. Additionally, I found this passage powerful due to the image of a shadow. We can draw so many meanings from shadows, often understanding that shadows exist as dark places that mimic another. Day paints the image of a shadow within another shadow, reinforcing the idea of existing in an unseen space, hidden from view. This brings up an important point that just because our society does not adequately see or hear many voices that need to be heard, the existence and persistence of these voices is essential to improving upon our individual and shared identities.

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This poem was a little challenging for me to follow as the author jumped from one subject to another. However, I thought that this created a realistic understanding of the thoughts that enter and exit someone’s mind. Additionally, the way that this information is presented to readers allows us to question how both internal thoughts and external events impact the way that individuals engage with their own identities. I also appreciated the references to music that were woven throughout the poem. As I read, I almost felt like the author was creating a soundtrack of life with the way that the musical references narrated moments in time.

One passage in particular stood out to me:

“there was a shooting in ohio today

the music made me feel a little anxious it was

hard thumping dance music a notch

upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life

the optimum tempo for cpr

I consider downloading a metronome real quick to test it to

tap it out but

I don’t want to be ‘anywhere near’ my phone

meaning it’s in my bag on the stool 2 feet from me”

I think that this was so striking to me because it creates a vivid picture of many things going on with the author all at once. It describes a horrible event that occurred, the anxiety that the author is experiencing, a thought process about making a decision, and the way that all of these things are interpreted and represented through music. As music continues to be woven throughout the poem, I continued to feel as though it represented a sort of soundtrack to the author’s life and the way that identities are influenced by both the internal and external.

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This reading was very interesting to me. I find that I always enjoy learning more about psychology and how human psychology both creates and impacts our identities.

I focused on one passage that seemed especially interesting:

“Like the symptom, the dream is an indirect or coded message, the interpretation of which holds the key to the meaning of the symptom. Dream interpretation is a complex process involving considerable skill on the part of the analysis; but Freud was confident that proper training would ensure reliable, scientific results” (179).

I think that there is so much that we have yet to find out about the psychology behind what makes us who we are, and this is just a small piece of it. However, it is incredible to think about dreams as a sort of “coded message” that should be read to understand more about who we are. If dream interpretation truly is reliable, could this information help us understand our identities better? Or maybe we already know enough about ourselves and our identities, and this seems unnecessary. If we were to connect this with one of the readings from this week, I think that it would pair well with “Stonewall to Standing Rock.” In my post about the poem, I discussed the way that the author seems to be impacted by both internal and external events. I think that it would be interesting to analyze the subconscious process that is occurring in the poem in addition to the conscious thought process that is presented to us as the reader. The same could be said for any text we have read, but this one in particular seems to connect well due to the flood of thoughts that are present.

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This short video provides a unique perspective from the author as reader questions are addressed and the development of the novel is described. I thought it was particularly interesting to hear why N.K. Jemisin chose to develop this story, and the questions that emerged for readers as they engaged with the text.

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‘The Fifth Season’ author N. K. Jemisin answers your questions

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As I started reading this book in my Covid haze, I was not impressed: the second-person POV kept throwing me off, and for a while, the braiding of the three stories was too much. However, the deeper I got into the book (and the more recovered I got from Covid), I feel in love with it. The characters were all so well developed, and the weaving of the stories happened FLAWLESSLY. When I realized that Damaya and Syenite were the same person, I audibly gasped, and then I kept thinking there's no way Essun is the same person. There's no way--and hot damn, there was a way! It was amazing and I loved it.

This book really didn't deal with gender as much (even though I'm guessing that Tonkee is going to have some transgender character development in further books of the series), but it dealt so much with identity. There's the obvious: Essun has recreated herself three times, and we get to see the conflict within each of those identities. At first, Damaya is a neglected child struggling to find her way in a scary new place, and then she is Syenite, a star orogene. Finally, she is a traumatized mother who just wants to fit in. Alabaster, on the other hand, is an orogene who just wants to break the system and its inequities. Simply being an orogene causes so much internal conflict for these characters.

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As you've all mentioned, this poem was a little hard to follow in the first read. However, after Googling a couple of the allusions to be sure I was interpreting it correctly, it all started to make sense and fall into place. The narrator is obviously worried about their friend who is at the Standing Rock protest, and is frustrated about the fact that people are treating this protest like "Burning Man," thus acting like it's a fun thing to do. Those people are missing out on the fact that this isn't just a fun festival; it's a protest for people who are seriously upset about the government, once again, is disrespecting Native Americans. I do wonder, though, what the significance of 100 bpm is. It's mentioned a couple times; does it allude to the survival of Native Americans and their culture? Does it relate to the narrator keeping his heartrate at a certain beat to remain calm? I'm not sure.

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This poem was full of biblical allusions, and I was *here for it!* As someone who has not-so-nice opinions of the Catholic church and its treatment of anyone not heterosexual, there were many mic drop moments for me. One of them was the following: "I was made in the image of a thing without an image.." Wow. I had to re-read that a couple times, because it's so true! Everyone in the church is quick to push the fact that humans are made in the image of God, but we don't even know what that is. The following also resonated with me: "...bestowed bodies names as if to say it is to make it so." There is so much that we just expect to be truth because someone, somewhere, at some point in time said so, but who's to say that statement is the truth? It reminds me of a sticker my coworker has on her computer; there are check boxes next to the words, "True, False, Who's to say?" and who's to say is checked. It really makes a person think: do we actually know what truth is? And if we don't, then who's to say that being heterosexual or homosexual is better than the other? Maybe people just exist, and we need to let whatever feels true be true.

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The thought that struck me the most while reading this chapter was how influenced by his culture Freud was. All of his theories about the Oedipus and Electra complexes and women feeling threatened because they don't have a penis...it is so influenced with the time period in which he lived. In the late 1800s/early 1900s, women were still viewed as the lesser sex, so of course he would think that women were doubly-traumatized because they have already been castrated. (181) His assumption that heterosexuality and nuclear families are the norm are also symptoms of the time he lived in.

After reading this, I now understand why one of my college professors so passionately disliked the man!

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As did everyone else, I picked up on the issue of identity in this reading. As we become a more globally aware society, it is easier and easier to identify multiple groups we can align ourselves with, and this is visible in, most interestingly, film studies. (38). It's true, though, that the types of movies being made lately has become much more diverse than before! Instead of seeing repetitive plot structures with heterosexual, nuclear families, we are beginning to see more and more culturally diverse families and individuals, and this is great!