Through literature, film, and other media, the Writing Injustice Book Group invites the Guilford community to explore the issues of race and inequality that shape our history and our world.Â
Conversations will be led and facilitated by Hazel V. Carby, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University, and Donna Daniels, Ph.D., Vice President, Heron Foundation and Cultural Anthropologist.
The Fifth Season (2016) by N.K. Jemisin
A brilliant and innovative writer, N.K. Jemisin is the first African American Writer to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel and the first author to win the Hugo Award in three consecutive years for The Fifth Season (2016) and its two sequels (2017,2018) comprising the Broken Earth trilogy.
The inhabitants of a planet face catastrophic climate change when the geological plates of a supercontinent shift and split apart causing massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shooting ash that blocks the sun. An oppressed minority group called orogenes are contained, controlled, and disciplined by the wealthy governments of the equatorial cities. Trained to prevent quakes and volcanoes, their power evokes fear and hatred in the rest of the population and many orogenes live as prisoners in disaster-prevention facilities. The novel moves between the lives of three orogene women exploited by their civilization. As we gradually uncover the complex relationship between them, we realize that this tale of a fractured planet is also a study of the human psyche under constant pressure of imminent disaster.
Copies of The Fifth Season will be available to checkout at the Reference desk.
These programs are free and open to all. Please register online, by phone, or in person at the reference desk.