Reading Science Fiction Politically: NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth Series

Mondays, bi-monthly, at 5:00 pm US ET, next on January 6.

Join us this winter to read N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate. As no other contemporary fiction, these novels connect with today’s existential dilemmas and political conflicts. Jemisin alludes to a long-past social order of unchecked, capitalist-driven technological growth like that of our time today. The ensuing environmental and political crisis broke the social order and in some senses the earth itself. Jemisin weaves a powerful story encompassing gender, race, enslavement, revolutionary upheaval, transgenerational trauma, and ultimately a path to renewal.  As much as the story itself, Jemisin’s engaging writing matches the scale of the story and won her multiple awards.

Reading NK Jemisin together this winter will make for a perfect antidote to the political catastrophes now in motion in the United States–and elsewhere.  We read Jemisin mindful of this reading group’s overall commitment, To build a better future, we have to envision it first (adapted from Walidah Imarisha) . Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for “envisioning” a future worth building. This fall, we continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.

Whether you have always read science fiction or never given it a second thought, consider spending a season with the MEP Science and Visionary Fiction book group. This fall, we will start a new series exploring climate and political crisis from new vantage points.