{"id":5202,"date":"2020-06-10T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5202"},"modified":"2020-06-01T16:07:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T23:07:06","slug":"mark-reads-the-fifth-season-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2020\/06\/mark-reads-the-fifth-season-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Fifth Season’: Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first chapter of The Fifth Season<\/i>, Essun disappears within herself. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For discussion of death (including death of child, death motivated by bigotry), grief<\/b><\/p>\n

Holy shit.<\/p>\n

This was intense, for reasons that are obvious and maybe some that weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start here: someone is telling this story to<\/i> Essun! The second person narration is from\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 someone? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that the identity of the narrator is important. Rather, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the context: we know the world is ending. Is the narrator trying to tell Essun the story of what happened for some specific reason? Are they telling her this at the start of a new beginning so she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll remember what came before? Because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where my mind went after reading those opening words. From there, I started making associations. For example: Essun is an orogene. Is that who that man was in the prologue, the one who reached out to the others with his sessapinae? Because Essun appears to have something very similar. And then there was this part:<\/p>\n

For the past ten years you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived as ordinary a life as possible. You came to Tirimo from elsewhere; the townsfolk don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care where or why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where exactly did she come from? Why is this so ambiguous here? Because y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, we just saw a being arrive outside of Tirimo and mimic humanity. Except\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Essun is human, right? Both? AH, I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW YET. But I feel like these little things are important. How old is Nassun? When did Jija and Essun get married? Where<\/i> is Nassun? Was she sent away or hid because Jija discovered a latent orogene power in her, too?<\/p>\n

Jemisin makes it clear in this chapter that the people of the Stillness don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just fear the orogene; they hate<\/i> them. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a slur for them in this world, too. But, of course, the most horrific end result is right there on the page, at least for Essun: her son must have exhibited some of her powers, and Jija murdered him on the spot.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing I liked so much about The Inheritance Trilogy<\/i> was how Jemisin took our very real oppressions and layered them into a fantasy world. Yet she avoided what so many fantasy writers do: craft metaphors that lack bite, that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t represent the experience in a way that feels authentic or real. Even worse, you get this thing (that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve complained about quite frequently) where a real-world oppressive order is transported to a fantasy world, but none of the people it actually affects are in the world at all. So, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the Harry Potter<\/i> syndrome: a half-decent exploration of racism and blood purity, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an almost entirely white cast. (Fuck J.K. Rowling, for the record, just in case it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clear.)\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening here. I can see so many parallels already. A hated people. The murder of a child because they start behaving strangely. A woman who has to hide who she is for fear of retribution. And now, ten years after she arrived in Tirimo, the end has begun. Her young son is dead, the world is falling apart, and everyone has figured out that she must<\/i> be an orogene, given that Tirimo was spared from the earthquakes that decimated literally everywhere else.<\/p>\n

But this was hard to read because I unfortunately know the debilitating power of grief due to recent events. Not just losing the love of my life, but the number of acquaintances and friends I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lost to this fucking pandemic, too. Jemisin accomplishes something phenomenal here. This is not in first person, so despite that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some distance between the narrator and the main character, we are still transported into Essun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experience.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And you\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 shut down. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean to. it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a bit much, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Too much. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been through a lot, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re very strong, but there are limits to what even you can bear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, I should acknowledge that this line has a whole different context when written by a Black woman. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak on this at length, but this society has violent and deeply unfair expectations on how much pain a Black woman should bear. I also found a personal meaning in this because sometimes, death is what shows a person their limits. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a pretty patient person, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived a life that has, at times, been incredibly intense. But there are limits, and I found mine in the last six months.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of those limits relate to what we do around the deceased. How do we view their bodies? What habits or rituals do we pick up in order to cope with death? The blanket thing fucked me up; I kept one of his blankets, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not ashamed to admit that I let it lay on the side of the bed he should be in, a side that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep on ever. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a thing I do. It makes sense to me. So reading Essun staying with Uche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand refusing to let Lerna cover up his face because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s afraid of the dark\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfelt like the most relatable thing in the world. Yeah. I get it. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to make an external sense: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most sensible thing imaginable for Essun to do.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there are people like Lerna, the ones who take on some of the burden of grief. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that the two haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen one another in a while, and yet, Lerna helps Essun in a very<\/i> real way. For some people\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmyself included\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m grieving. I can somehow go hours and hours and hours without thinking about food. Lerna takes care of many of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d things that Essun will need, and sleep is a big one. He does all this without question, too, which is one way that Jemisin reveals a vital quality of his: He appears to be one of the few people who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t despise Essun because she is an orogene. Hell, later on, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be angry on her behalf:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Half of them are appalled, but the rest are glad Jija did it. Because of course<\/i> a three-year-old has the power to start shakes a thousand miles away in Yumenes!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jemisin is slowly revealing the complicated politics of this society. Do most people believe that orogenes are responsible for the shakiness of the world? Is that why they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so hated? Is that why they cheer on the death of a young boy?<\/p>\n

Wow, that is also a very upsetting thing to type in 2020, particularly right fucking now.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also a number of smaller details here that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite understand. Like Strongbacks. What \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stonelore\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is and what Essun meant by referring to it. (Though I feel like she means that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lore surrounding the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153end,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d right? It must be a reference to that Tablet that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quoted at the end of the chapter.) Who is Rask? What about the Resistant use-caste? What are they resisting against<\/i>?<\/p>\n

And what the fuck is Jija going to say when Essun finds him?<\/p>\n

Notes<\/b><\/p>\n