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isunshoweryall this book is so good? this book is so good. hello..
ok, so a nonexhaustive list of things i love. 1. bel. i want to see more of bel in the sequels. extremely minor character though he may be, he was SO funny and i also really liked the parallels between bel's trans experience and manny's... city-god-becoming experience? or whatever tf is going on there? i also want manny backstory like yes ok the point is that hes new york NOW and who he was before doesnt matter but also i wanna know what hes running from and why he knows all the manipulating people shit. 2. the use of names in this book? the way that brooklyn is brooklyn (and has always been brooklyn), the way that manny becomes manhattan and his old name doesn't matter, bronca being the bronx, aislyn being staten island because of how SHE pronounces and understands her name, and... padmini just being padmini? i looked it up and the name doesn't translate to "queen", i don't think, so. i wonder about that. or how madison, conceived on madison avenue, has new york powers just a little bit. or how hong and paulo maybe have always had those names or maybe they're just derived from their city names because that's easier, like paulo is paulo but also he's sao paulo yknow? 3. bronca's descriptions of work life, because i work at an arts nonprofit now.
and the #5 thing i like, that i kept thinking about throughout the book, is jemisin's treatment of aislyn. it would have been so, so easy for aislyn to be written off within the narrative as just... mean, narcissistic, racist without much thought. and while aislyn is bigoted, she's also portrayed with a lot of sympathy: she's an abuse victim, she's being controlled, she's a part of the cycle of violence, she's sexually assaulted and that impacts her behavior and perspective! something in her is beginning to doubt but the woman in white is controlling her and preventing that from being realized, she's actively manipulating aislyn! aislyn is an antagonist in some senses, but she is also, concretely, a VICTIM of attitudes and systems bigger than herself in a way that, i feel, humanly portrays how staten islanders might feel (ive never been im not a new yorker i dont know) about being cut off and disenfranchised from and by their city in that way. i am really, really excited to see her learn and change and break out of the cycle of abuse in the following books.
ok, so a nonexhaustive list of things i love. 1. bel. i want to see more of bel in the sequels. extremely minor character though he may be, he was SO funny and i also really liked the parallels between bel's trans experience and manny's... city-god-becoming experience? or whatever tf is going on there? i also want manny backstory like yes ok the point is that hes new york NOW and who he was before doesnt matter but also i wanna know what hes running from and why he knows all the manipulating people shit. 2. the use of names in this book? the way that brooklyn is brooklyn (and has always been brooklyn), the way that manny becomes manhattan and his old name doesn't matter, bronca being the bronx, aislyn being staten island because of how SHE pronounces and understands her name, and... padmini just being padmini? i looked it up and the name doesn't translate to "queen", i don't think, so. i wonder about that. or how madison, conceived on madison avenue, has new york powers just a little bit. or how hong and paulo maybe have always had those names or maybe they're just derived from their city names because that's easier, like paulo is paulo but also he's sao paulo yknow? 3. bronca's descriptions of work life, because i work at an arts nonprofit now.
and the #5 thing i like, that i kept thinking about throughout the book, is jemisin's treatment of aislyn. it would have been so, so easy for aislyn to be written off within the narrative as just... mean, narcissistic, racist without much thought. and while aislyn is bigoted, she's also portrayed with a lot of sympathy: she's an abuse victim, she's being controlled, she's a part of the cycle of violence, she's sexually assaulted and that impacts her behavior and perspective! something in her is beginning to doubt but the woman in white is controlling her and preventing that from being realized, she's actively manipulating aislyn! aislyn is an antagonist in some senses, but she is also, concretely, a VICTIM of attitudes and systems bigger than herself in a way that, i feel, humanly portrays how staten islanders might feel (ive never been im not a new yorker i dont know) about being cut off and disenfranchised from and by their city in that way. i am really, really excited to see her learn and change and break out of the cycle of abuse in the following books.
