Editor’s Note: Yes, it’s March. February got away from us before we’d even realized it happened. Short month is short. Nevertheless, please enjoy our discussion!
Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!
How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? (2019)
Written by: N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction
Pages: 416 (Kindle)
Publisher: Orbit
Premise:
N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.
Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.
Obvious spoiler warning for a book we should have all read by now
Discussion: Look, pretty much every single time I’ve talked about N.K. Jemisin’s writing, I’ve mentioned my love of the fact that she doesn’t spell things out for you, that her books start in media res and just hope that you’ll catch up at some point. I’ve mentioned this so many times. It’s true of her short stories too, where her sparse detail and tiny clues for world building are perhaps even more effective. I just love every single thing about the way she constructs her stories.
Stand out favorites for me: I’d read it before, but I really love the moral quandary in “Cloud Dragon Skies.” It was never actually presented as a quandary, really. The sky people made their decisions and acted on them. Still, it makes me wonder what I would have done given the same amount of information. Would I try to fix the sky? Or would I leave everything alone as I’d promised I would do?
I’d love to see more of the world of “The Effluent Engine.” The world building was so interesting and we saw such a tiny part of it. Plus I want more of Jessaline and Eugenie’s love story. Are Eugenie’s efforts successful? Do they live happily ever after? Does Jessaline get bored? I have so many questions!
And, in backwards order, the first story, “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” was so fascinating. I loved that moment toward the end, where the narrator broke to ask the audience if we thought it would end with the death of a child, because I did. I did think it was going to end with the death of a child. The idea that America’s media leaks into their world and poisons the minds of their inhabitants and the only way to fix that is a mercy killing but only adults because children can still be saved.
I can’t end this without talking about the forward. I’ve done a lot of work as an adult to step back from my own white privilege, and it makes me sad to look back and realize how little I’ve noticed the lack of Black people in futuristic settings, especially in the Grand Masters of science fiction. It’s a little heartbreaking and a little fantastic that this collection was born out of a desire to see Black people in the future. We’re so lucky to have N.K. Jemisin.
In conclusion: I love Jemisin and so should you.
I’m so excited that I’ve actually done my homework and finished this book. This was my first experience with N.K. Jemisin and I’m hooked. I definitely plan to read her longer works when I have time. I did wish that the collection had been pared down a little because this could have the best short story collection I’ve ever read but there were some stories that I thought were duds.
One of my favorites was “Red Dirt Witch” in which the mother sacrifices herself to the fairies for her daughter and to bring about civil rights for African-Americans. I loved it partially because a black man becoming President was once as far-fetched as any science fiction. I also loved the story about Hurricane Katrina, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters” for the great title and Tookie’s struggle to be a better person and “The Storyteller’s Replacement” for the haunting coldness of the dragon daughters. I also liked how Jemisin incorporated the love of food and cooking into a few of the stories. When I read “Cuisine de Memoires,” about the restaurant that can produce any meal from history or your memories, I wanted a whole book in that universe and for that restaurant to be real. I want one of my late grandmother’s Sunday dinners again–chicken, potato salad, butter beans, squash with potatoes, angel biscuits, sweet tea, and pound cake. Most of the vegetables came from my grandfather’s garden. I can make those recipes but it’s not the same.
Yesssss I loved all of those as well.
Regarding the length, I get why The City Born Great was included, but at novella length and, like, previously released all by itself, I think it could have been left out.
I’m still working my way through, but holy cats. I get it now, and I might have to follow in your “READ ALL OF THE WORDS” project that you’ve been working on for the last year. Amazing.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I still haven’t finished the last one, obviously, but man all of her stuff is so good, even the Mass Effect Andromeda tie in!
I’ve been an NK Jemisin fan for a while now, and I was not expecting to do anything other that love this book. I’ve read some of the stories before, but it’s always good to get a combo of new stories plus old stories to re-read. I find it difficult to review a book of short stories, though.
Yeah, it was hard to know which ones to pick out to highlight. Which ones stuck with you this time through?
I also actually finished reading this one time! I had a moment in the first story where finishing was in question… but kudos to Jemisin for not only nailing Le Guin’s voice (at least, in the first part; also, mind you, I love Le Guin’s fiction, but I have to be IN THE MOOD for her fiction), but for turning it on its head and making me pay attention. From that point on, it was hard to put the collection down. I don’t think I was disappointed by a single story. It also reminded me that I absolutely need to finish the other Dreamblood book, as well as finish the Broken Earth trilogy. I always love what I read of Jemisin’s work. I hate that I’m so behind on her books.
Man this past year, each time I read a new work by her I questioned why I took so long to read ANY of them. They’ve been out for years!! I could have been emotionally compromising myself all along!!!