Together, we are the future: Going from here in N.K. Jemisin’s Walking Awake

The clarity of hindsight often lures us to become mired in blame and guilt. As we wake up and become aware that the world is the way it is because certain humans have shaped it in their interest, people who are oppressed are tempted to demonize and cast out those responsible for their oppression, while people who are oppressors are tempted to silence and suffocate those naming them as a source of harm. The complex reality is that all of us contain both oppressed and oppressor; all of us inflict harm on others in some way simply as a consequence of being born into an oppressive framework. Our social environment is constructed to facilitate oppression, and it sows division and conflict among the oppressed.

Instead of standing still as our pasts consume us, we must commit to a philosophy of going from here: as oppressed people, we acknowledge and honor past harm but do not allow it to cloud the future; as oppressors, we embrace being accountable but do not allow accountability to stagnate into guilt; together, we allow our experience to inform and guide us as we work towards a world without oppressive structures.

In Walking Awake, the main character, Sadie, is complicit in a system that raises human hosts for parasitic beings we later learn were created by humanity in the distant past. She is…