Debarkle Chapter 21: Dramatis Personae — N.K.Jemisin

Nora Ketia Jemisin has some notable Hugo Award firsts: the first Black woman to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the first author to win three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel. Those impressive wins are still a long way away in the history of the Sad Puppy Debarkle but within the story of a conservative counter-reaction to social change, they will play a key part. Jemisin’s 2015 novel The Fifth Season is, I believe, exactly the kind of stand-out novel that future voters for Hugo Awards will use a yardstick to compare later finalists. It is also a novel that if events had played out differently in the history I am recounting, would never have been nominated.

As with earlier Dramatis Personae essays, this chapter uses two key sources:

• N.K.Jemisin’s Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._K._Jemisin
• N.K.Jemisin’s own biographical press kit https://nkjemisin.com/about/press-kit/

Any unreferenced statement will be either my opinion or drawn from one of those links listed above. Also, like the earlier Dramatis Personae chapters, this biographical essay only follows its subject up to the current point in the narrative. For Jemisin it will take the reader to about 2013 but in the process, we will double back to years and events that we have already visited in earlier chapters. Readers should also note that this chapter is in the context of the history of a conservative/right-wing reaction within science fiction which will result in a different emphasis on events and included references to people who might not appear (or be of less significance) in a biographical essay of Jemisin for a different context.

Jemisin was born in the early 1970s in the midwest but grew up in Alabama and in New York City. She trained as a psychologist but had a long interest in writing fiction. Like many of the people I’m discussing in these biographies, her shift towards writing professionally took a more substantial step in her early thirties.

In 2002 she attended the Viable Paradise writers workshop, based in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts^[1]. Writer’s workshops play an important role in publishing in part by supporting social networks as well as helping new writers navigate professional spaces. Of people who will appear later Viable Paradise workshop has included attendees such as Myke Cole, Deirdre Saorise Moen^[2] and Marko Kloos^[3], as well as instructors such as Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Steven Gould, Laura J Mixon and John Scalzi.

Jemisin’s experience at Viable Paradise convinced her to work on short stories although her interest has been in novels. She acquired an agent in 2004:

“I’d acquired her on the strength of a novel that I thought would definitely be my breakout. It had everything the genre seemed to want, and it was the best writing I’d ever done to that point. I quickly wrote a sequel, since it was burning in my brain, and then I waited. And waited. It didn’t sell.”

https://nkjemisin.com/2010/03/i-am-the-market/

In the 2000’s she started getting traction with her short fiction, with her work appearing at Escape Pod and in Jim Baen’s Universe magazine^[5]. Jemisin’s 2009 short story in Clarkesworld Non-Zero Probabilities^[6] led to critical recognition as well as becoming a Nebula and a Hugo Award finalist in 2010. That same year would see the release of her first published novel[7], which was also featured as a “Big Idea” post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. There Jemisin explained some of her thoughts about epic fantasy and how she had worked those into her novel:

“Yeah, sure, there’s a certain mental comfort food in the idea of putting the world back to rights. But there’s always a part of me that wonders, which rights should it be put back to? Did the heroes make the best choice, or just the easiest one? Who gets to answer that question? But such questions aren’t easy to answer, which is why I think a lot of fantasy simply doesn’t try.”

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/26/the-big-idea-n-k-jemisin/

Jemisin had been discussing these ideas about the hidden assumptions within fantasy (and speculative fiction more generally) for some time. In 2007 she took up a guest blogging spot at The Angry Black Woman blog to outline her perspective on the state of the genre:

“Speculative fiction (SF) has been, historically, one of the most racist genres in American literature. Oh, it hasn’t had as many Stepinfetchits or Uncle Toms as the mainstream, but there are few more powerful ways to wrong a people than to wipe it out of existence, and this is precisely what countless SF novels have done. If the crew of the Space Navy Vessel Whozimawhatsit is all white; if a vast medieval epic spanning several continents contains no one browner than a tan; if the scientific accomplishments of ancient nonwhite empires are dismissed as alien leftovers; if China is the only country toasted by an invading space warship; all of these is a kind of literary genocide. (Yes, genocide.) And it’s something that SF has not only done for years, but continues to do; shit like this gets published all. the. time.”

http://theangryblackwoman.com/2007/04/21/no-more-lily-white-futures-and-monochrome-myths/

In the same essay, Jemisin explained how she was not only changing how fantasy engaged with more authentically diverse worlds but was also challenging some of the genre’s institutions. She picks up on a recurring theme from authors across the political spectrum at this time: the science fiction and fantasy genres are in trouble in terms of sales and in terms of an ageing fandom.

“When I attend SF conventions, I don’t just stand out because I’m black, but because I’m young; the core of the fandom is literally dying of old age. There’s a lot of debate in the SF literary world as to whether the genre really is in trouble or not, but AFAIC, the signs ain’t good.”

ibid

To exemplify her point, Jemisin has asked SFWA members on the organisations LiveJournal^[8] what the SFWA was doing to improve the demographics away from the “white and male”. The response had been disappointing:

“My question was a simple one, in essence: what has SFWA done to encourage diversity? My first answer was a resounding blog silence for about 24 hours. Later, SFWA members repeatedly pointed out to me that SFWA has had a handful of black (and female, and gay, and so on) members for years. Others pointed out that SFWA doesn’t discourage anyone from joining the organization. Someone noted that SFWA donated money to another organization for a diversity scholarship, though did nothing itself. Others seemed quite incensed that I implied SFWA was racist (I hadn’t). One accused me of trying to turn SFWA into the NAACP.”

ibid

Jemisin would become a regular blogger at Angry Black Woman using the handle Nojojojo. There and elsewhere she discussed issues around SFF as a genre, race, racism, immigration and feminism.

In 2008 an author received an Islamophobic rejection letter from Helix magazine, saying that “most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads”^[9]. Jemisin was one of several authors who to publicly protest Helix’s response, set up an author website publishing fiction as a counterweight to the ingrained issues like this within SFF publishing. Other authors involved included Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee and Rachel Swirsky. At the site, Jemisin introduced her author statement with a brief anecdote

“I will never forget the first time I heard a young cousin of mine—only a little older than 12, the “golden age” as they call it in this genre—say, “Why do you write that stuff? That’s white people’s stuff.”

Science fiction and fantasy, he meant. White people’s stuff.”

http://transcriptase.org/statements/nkjemisin/#more-324

Jemisin went on to say:

“But there’s another reason why my young cousin might’ve decided that SF/F is the sole province of one group of people, and that is because there’s a stunning amount of bigotry rampant within the SF/F community itself. In just the past year I’ve seen prominent, bestselling SF/F authors calling for the criminalization of homosexuality, advocating the death-through-medical-neglect of Spanish-speaking immigrants (just the illegals, note, as if that’s better), and trivializing rape and sexual objectification. The Helix incident is only the latest salvo in a long-running war by a few individuals in the SF community against several million other members of the human race.”

ibid^[10]

However, this was a prelude to her wider point. What was worse, in her view, than the overt bigotry was the surrounding silence.

“In neutral situations silence can have multiple meanings, positive and negative and in-between. To a member of a marginalized group, however, silence in response to bigotry can only be negative, because it connotes approval, or at best ambivalence. The golden age of 12 is also the much less shiny age at which many children of oppressed groups begin to understand bigotry, often through unpleasant personal experience. And these children are going to wonder why there’s such a disconnect between what the SF/F community says—e.g., that it’s progressive and welcomes diversity—and what it does—e.g., that so many of its members remain silent in the face of hate. And these kids are likely to conclude, as my cousin did, that SF/F is Not For Them.”

ibid

The silence (or intellectualised civility) in the face of overt bigotry was a larger problem because it involved far more people. The silence allowed the overt bigotry to work its effect of making it clear that some people would not be welcomed in science fictional communities (of fans or of writers or of both). While people not targetted by overt bigotry might assume that the overt ideological racists (or misogynists or homophobes) were powerless minorities whose extreme views would never get an upper hand, practically those pushing prejudice were effectively enforcing prejudice in an immediate and direct manner. The overt prejudice and the surrounding silence all served to marginalise the already marginalised and silence some voices. Not everybody’s freedom of speech was given equal worth.

Towards the end of that statement, Jemisin would state:

“I need to be able to look these kids in the eye and tell them that I’m an SF/F writer without feeling a twinge of shame as I say it. I need to see pride in their eyes, not confusion or concern, when they look back at me. Hell, I need to be able to look myself in the eye, with my self-respect intact.

So I will not let bigots bully me and mine out of this genre. I won’t let them do it to anyone else, either. I will fight back with everything I have.”

ibid

Not surprisingly, in 2009 N.K.Jemisin was a major voice in the wide-ranging discussion of race and racism within science fiction known as RaceFail. I’ve discussed that in more details (including some of Jemisin’s statements) in Chapter 13^[11]. As well as being engaged in the topic at her own blog and on LiveJournal, Jemisin was one of the most insightful commentators on the follow-up posts at Whatever^[12].

By 2013, Jemisin was a rising star. Her fantasy fiction was hitting a popular balance between the classic aspect of the genre with a refreshing new perspective. In online spaces, her outspoken politics was part of a wave of newer writers looking to bring the genre into a better future aesthetically, culturally and socially.

In May 2013, Jemisin set off on a 20-hour journey to the other side of the world as the Guest of Honour at the Australian pop-culture convention Continuum in Melbourne^[13]…but that’s a story for another chapter.

Next Time: We double back in time a little to look at part 1 of the saga of the troubles at the SFWA

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Footnote

• [1] https://viableparadise.com/viable-paradise-experience/happens-viable-paradise/
• [2] 2002 http://www.zanzjan.net/cgi-bin/vp/vp-sales.pl?byvp=6
• [3] 2008 http://www.zanzjan.net/cgi-bin/vp/vp-sales.pl?byvp=12
• [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_Paradise
• [5] https://nkjemisin.com/bibliography/ The story from Jim Baen’s Universe was later reprinted at Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2014/06/30/playing-nice-with-gods-bowling-ball/
• [6] http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/jemisin_09_09/
• [7] https://nkjemisin.com/2010/02/its-february-22nd-do-you-know-what-that-means/
• [8] https://web.archive.org/web/20130601030742/https://sfwa.livejournal.com/8799.html
• [9] http://transcriptase.org/what-happened/
• [10]the reference to medical neglect was a reported conversation between SIGMA members Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle https://io9.gizmodo.com/larry-niven-tells-dhs-to-spread-organ-harvesting-rumors-370762 and original article here https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2008/2/29/2008march-science-fiction-mavens-offer-far-out-homeland-security-advice
• [11] https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/debarkle-chapter-13-meanwhile-racefail09/
• [12] eg https://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/16/taking-one-for-the-team-k-tempest-bradford/#comment-136312
• [13] https://nkjemisin.com/2013/05/off-to-the-other-side-of-the-planet/