Reactionary movements can't sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on.
Interpretation
Reactionary movements thrive only by identifying new targets for their anger and resentment.
N. K. Jemisin's quote highlights the nature of reactionary movements, which often rely on a constant stream of new grievances or threats to maintain momentum. Without the ability to discover and vilify new enemies or ideas, these movements tend to stagnate or lose their energy, emphasizing how they are fueled more by opposition than by a constructive agenda.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about social movements during a political science lecture.
Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't.
I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem strangely denuded. But to them, I guess it doesn't seem strange. And I guess that's their privilege. It isn't mine.
I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.
There's a thriving field of self-published stuff in, particularly, black fiction. I don't know that other groups of people of color have that same recourse.
Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.
I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.
Every man is our brother, and every manβs burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal.
I hope that when I'm 90 years old, I've accomplished a legacy that isn't all about me. I hope it's a legacy about the people who our foundation helps.
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
The problem is we have to transcend cultural languages and fall into a phase with the communication systems that nature has placed all around us.
Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
I prefer to believe that people are good and honest and respect me enough to tell me the truth. It's not easy to find those people all the time, but they're out there.
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