49 pages • 1 hour read
N. K. JemisinThe World We Make
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: The City We Became
Content Warning: This section refers to racism.
The Great Cities trilogy is based on the idea that cities can become alive through choosing human avatars to hold and enact their will. In The City We Became (2020), the first book in the series, Jemisin introduces the six avatars of New York City, born in the middle of conflict with a great, cosmic enemy (the Ur, represented by the avatar of their city, R’lyeh). When New York’s primary avatar, who is unnamed in the first book, is injured during the first fight, he falls into a long slumber, hidden away underground where the enemy can’t reach him. The other five avatars, one for each borough of New York City, wake to their power and new identity and must decide whether they want to join the others or reject their new calling.
One by one, these avatars join together. They explore their “city-power,” the new abilities given to them by the city, which utilize “concepts” unique to their borough’s identity. As they grow in skill, they seek to find and revive the primary avatar and to defend New York City from the “Woman in White” (later revealed to be R’lyeh). However, R’lyeh gets Staten Island under her control before its avatar, Aislyn, meets any of the others. Fearful of people generally and people of color specifically, Aislyn is easily swayed into believing that R’lyeh is her ally. This absence weakens the avatars for their confrontation with R’lyeh, but just as all hope seems lost, Jersey City is made an honorary borough of New York City. Together, the avatars wake the primary and banish R’lyeh to a single stronghold over Staten Island. The World We Make picks up where its predecessor leaves off, expanding on its themes of racism and structural inequality.
Critical Context: Lovecraft and Racism
H. P. Lovecraft is renowned as one of the most innovative and influential writers of the 20th century, revolutionizing genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror in ways that continue to shape literature. However, he is also remembered for espousing racist and antisemitic ideals in his writing and relationships. For example, The Shadow Over Innsmouth concerns the hybridization of a small, seaside community with the “Deep Ones”—a species of fishlike humanoids. The story frames this hybridization as viscerally abhorrent and is commonly interpreted to reflect Lovecraft’s anxieties about racial “purity.”
In recent years, a wave of BIPOC writers has reclaimed Lovecraft’s ideas, using them to challenge the racist ideals that he perpetuated. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle retells a Lovecraft story from a Black perspective. Silvia Moreno-Garcia uses Lovecraftian elements in Mexican Gothic, which centers around racial injustices and eugenics. P. Djéli Clark’s Ring Shout recounts an alternate history of the Ku Klux Klan featuring dark magic and otherworldly beings. As a Black author working with distinctly Lovecraftian elements—such as the otherworldly ancient horror of the Ur and the alien city of R’lyeh—Jemisin is also in critical conversation with H. P. Lovecraft, using his stylistic elements to challenge systemic oppression, racist ideologies, and everyday microaggressions. In this way, each of these authors not only rejects Lovecraft’s racism but repurpose his mythos as a tool for justice and equity.
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