#walkingawake

[jo808]

Blog Post #6 - “Walking Awake”

“Walking Awake” by N.K. Jemisin's short story was thrilling to read. My first thought when beginning this read was that it had parallels to “Get Out” directed by Jordan Peele. From the start, I understood that humans were being bred to serve as hosts for beings called “masters”. Sadie, the head caregiver, seemed uneasy about her work from the start of the short story, but it was not until I read about her dreamlike conversations with Enri that I fully grasped what was actually going on. Unlike “Get Out,” where black people were being picked to be hosts for old white people, there is an alien element to this story. Although the author doesn’t specify the species of the “masters,” it is clear that they are more like parasites than humans, breeding humans to live in their bodies. When a master chooses Enri as a host, it is revealed that the human hosts are able to think and therefore are trapped in their bodies, only communicating through this sort of dream-like space, almost an in-between reality and dreaming. It is here that Sadie communicates with Enri. The whole story was thrilling, and although disturbing, I was constantly excited to understand more about the world N.K. Jemisin was creating. The way she mixed dialogue with Sadie's thoughts and point of view kept the short story exceedingly interesting throughout the whole read. After reading it once, I realized there was also an option to listen to it. The listen was really captivating as the voice actor did a great job making her inflection match the different characters throughout the story. Sadie’s struggle to decide whether to sacrifice herself and create change, or to continue being a pawn in the system she now knew was so wrong, was interesting to me. I thought it was interesting how Sadie not only battled with her own morals but also knew she shouldn’t be thinking that way. It showed that this process that the masters have created is a deeply embedded and intricate system. All the hosts are numbers, given options to be on different plans, all designed to make them wanted by the masters. For example, when a master asked for a host that was skilled at dancing, Sadie’s co-worker suggested Ten-36 because “she opted for the physical/artistic track of training.” Then, when Ten-36 was brought for the transfer, she was described as “beaming.” This shows that the system is so normalized in this fictional world that hosts are actually honored and excited to serve as hosts. This was a chilling concept to me. Overall, the story was very interesting and made me reflect on a variety of concepts from slavery to revolution. I really enjoyed reading this piece and am excited to listen to more short stories now that I discovered the LightSpeed podcast.

[ariellagad]

Walking Awake by N.K. Jemisin

Walking Awake by N.K. Jemisin talks about a futuristic world where humans are controlled by aliens who are referred to as “Masters.” Humans are like the shells the aliens use and then throw away when they are done with them. The main character, Sadie, is a human who works for the aliens and sees the system that the aliens are controlling as normal. Ultimately, Sadie sees the system for what it is and realizes how messed up it is. 

There is a central theme of slavery throughout the story, and some parallels to real-life slavery for Black people. One parallel I caught in the story to real life was how the “Masters” would pick out which human bodies they wanted, which reminded me of how slaves were auctioned off, and the white slave “masters” would pick which slave they wanted. However, something interesting in the story was how the vast majority of the humans under the “Masters” were young people.  

The story shows how people can ultimately just fall victim to a corrupted system because it is all that they’ve ever known and can’t really see what is wrong with it. There are so many examples of this in real life and in our current society, however, this central message of the story really plays into how some slaves once viewed their realities. It really shows how powerful the normalization of corrupted systems and ideas is and how it can drastically impact people’s lives. Ultimately, however, Sadie “wakes up” and kind of sees the system for how messed up it is. But she has to walk awake, be aware, and continue going through the system. You can’t clap with one hand. 

As a whole, the story is pretty eerie and horror-like, which isn’t what I thought could be part of Afrofuturism. But after reading this story and being exposed to a few other horror-Afrofuturism stories, I think the horror sub-genre of Afrofuturism is my favorite. I think it plays well with what Afrofuturism conveys because you could think of the why behind Afrofuturism being a horrifying reality for a lot of people. In simpler words, the fact that Black people are so overlooked in narratives, particularly in science and technology, is a horrifying reality, and using horror as a sub-genre in Afrofuturism, which reimagines the reality of a lot of Black people, is really fitting and puts a unique spin on the subject.