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A review by ntembeast
The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book is an absolute masterpiece collection of sci-fi short stories set in the Dirty Computer universe, first created by Janelle Monae via her music/videos. It's diverse, filled with complex, wonderfully frustrating and authentic characters, and a world of such fascinating parallel and potential to our own. It feels like it's one shadow away from the world we currently live in, in the best kind of way. A sci-fi that cautions and reflects, like a mirror, all the worst and best parts of us right now through the lens of a beautifully black femme and nonbinary, queer perspective. Such a delightful, fascinating, in depth, and wholly immersive experience. An absolute immediate recommendation for everyone to buy. It's incredible. Simply wonderful!
The Memory Librarian
This introduction did a fantastic job of setting up the world for us to settle into. Incredible imagery, fantastic twists, unreliable main characters, side characters, and a nuanced depth to decisions made by everyone we read about. No one is perfect. No one is exactly what they seem. But they're also never 100% good or 100% bad. And that's the beauty of this world that gets set up for us here: the stark understanding that this world is not what it pretends to be, not what it seems to be even when you think we're taking off the mask and seeing it for its true self, because sometimes not even the characters we're reading about want to be their true selves. Sometimes, everything they do and feel is so authentic, while also being so much more complex than just good or bad, right and wrong. It's a brilliant, painful, complicated beginning, with a touch of hope, a promise of potential, that--now that I've finished this book--is a trademark of this entire collection of stories, and of this world that Janelle Monae and their collaborators have created. Stunning, unforgettable; and not just inspiring: consuming, like a conflagration, like the all-encompassing flames of a phoenix being reborn. And that's what makes it so very, very worthwhile.
Nevermind
I love everything about this story. A look outside of the streets we became familiar with in the first story. This is where you begin to understand that every tale is an entirely separate, and yet beautifully fully fleshed out concept that integrates seamlessly with the rest of this world. I love the emphasis on a community as it should be: welcoming of all individuals regardless of the way that they choose to represent themselves to the world, whether by gender, by polyamory, by fluidity. It shows how fear and pain can rip apart the strongest of communities if we let it, but also shows how if we stand together, with love and respect, with understanding, and a heart and mind ready and willing to listen and learn, that we can overcome even the treacherous holes boring poison inside us. In a world that still fights about these things, I'm so happy that we had an anti-TERF message that focused on a mix of passion and respect for the natural healing we can all find, no matter how much our circumstances have harmed us.
Timebox
I've never been so simultaneously seen and called out by just about anything in the world. Our main character in this story is experiencing a tale as old as time in this capitalistic hellscape we currently reside in, mirrored in this world we see here. It's probably the story that's the closest to our current world, and perhaps that's why I was so violently in tune with the exhaustion it conveyed. The burnout, the always being a million steps ahead, planning down to the last second to fit a hundred-thousand different things into a day when you've had no rest, no help, no chance at a break for ever in your foreseeable future for not just hours, not just days, not just weeks, not just months, not just years, but for a lifetime, a lifetime of never ever ever being able to stop, to rest, to catch up-- to just keep pushing through, barely, barely, consumed by the balancing that never stops... only for the people you trusted most in your life to turn around and betray you. Oof... even seeing the signs from the very first page didn't prepare me for the heartbreak of this story. It's so gut-wrenchingly painful, and probably the only story of all five in this book that really left on this desperately terrible, horrible, sad ending. And yet, such a necessary one. A necessary one, to truly convey to those who do not understand what it is that some people go through, what their every single instance of consciousness is like, and how mistreated, how desperately hopeful and burnt out and fragile those perpetually burning candles of some people are. It's a wailing, a dirge for the suffering constantly going on around us, and I loved this story so much for it. For showing an existence that hurts, but that is so, so relevant to so many.
Save Changes
This story is so simple, but really had me bouncing all over the place with my feelings (in a good way). It had me suspicious as hell at the beginning when we met the main character's mother, because *squints* but the commitment really did present a horrifying possibility, one that isn't unrealistic to conceive, considering the type of technological advances in this world, especially harkening back to the first story of this collection, The Memory Librarian, and the evidence of damage that can happen to individuals taken by New Dawn. But this story is another one that excels at misleading you, because I started off being on the main character's side entirely against their sister, only to flip my thoughts entirely, until I was finding myself siding with her sister and defending her entirely. It's such a lovely portrayal of the fact that sometimes your siblings are actually so much more than you perceive them as, and I love that the tale was able to eventually get them to understand and respect one another. Though I will say, the low-key anxiety about our main character using her father's gift at the wrong time made me be like, "You had me in the first half, not gonna lie!" because I thought for SURE she was going to fuck it up. The fact that things played out the way they did... I was ready to shake our main character so badly at the end. Kudos, big kudos on leading me on the way you did. And also, love the further exploration of natural entities and powers in the world being utilized outside just our advanced technology. A sweet, if sometimes exasperating story.
Timebox Altar(ed)
The best way I can describe this short story is to say that it's as if the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII was mixed with The Animatrix's episode Beyond, the Witches from A Wrinkle in Time, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I mean that in the BEST kind of way. This was such a fun and hopeful, healing story after some of the brutally real threat and despair in the stories that came before it, and I think the author couldn't have ended the book on a better note. It was beautiful and fun and whimsical and made my heart fill with love and fire, with passion and determination. This is what we fight for. This is what we need to remember when we step out into the world. When we are given the chance to choose silence and obedience, or to speak out and create something better. We have the chance every single day, every single moment, to be better. And this book really did fill me with that. What a fantastic way to end. This book is going straight into my shopping cart, because I absolutely need it in my library, right now. And everyone, everyone, should read it.
The Memory Librarian
This introduction did a fantastic job of setting up the world for us to settle into. Incredible imagery, fantastic twists, unreliable main characters, side characters, and a nuanced depth to decisions made by everyone we read about. No one is perfect. No one is exactly what they seem. But they're also never 100% good or 100% bad. And that's the beauty of this world that gets set up for us here: the stark understanding that this world is not what it pretends to be, not what it seems to be even when you think we're taking off the mask and seeing it for its true self, because sometimes not even the characters we're reading about want to be their true selves. Sometimes, everything they do and feel is so authentic, while also being so much more complex than just good or bad, right and wrong. It's a brilliant, painful, complicated beginning, with a touch of hope, a promise of potential, that--now that I've finished this book--is a trademark of this entire collection of stories, and of this world that Janelle Monae and their collaborators have created. Stunning, unforgettable; and not just inspiring: consuming, like a conflagration, like the all-encompassing flames of a phoenix being reborn. And that's what makes it so very, very worthwhile.
Nevermind
I love everything about this story. A look outside of the streets we became familiar with in the first story. This is where you begin to understand that every tale is an entirely separate, and yet beautifully fully fleshed out concept that integrates seamlessly with the rest of this world. I love the emphasis on a community as it should be: welcoming of all individuals regardless of the way that they choose to represent themselves to the world, whether by gender, by polyamory, by fluidity. It shows how fear and pain can rip apart the strongest of communities if we let it, but also shows how if we stand together, with love and respect, with understanding, and a heart and mind ready and willing to listen and learn, that we can overcome even the treacherous holes boring poison inside us. In a world that still fights about these things, I'm so happy that we had an anti-TERF message that focused on a mix of passion and respect for the natural healing we can all find, no matter how much our circumstances have harmed us.
Timebox
I've never been so simultaneously seen and called out by just about anything in the world. Our main character in this story is experiencing a tale as old as time in this capitalistic hellscape we currently reside in, mirrored in this world we see here. It's probably the story that's the closest to our current world, and perhaps that's why I was so violently in tune with the exhaustion it conveyed. The burnout, the always being a million steps ahead, planning down to the last second to fit a hundred-thousand different things into a day when you've had no rest, no help, no chance at a break for ever in your foreseeable future for not just hours, not just days, not just weeks, not just months, not just years, but for a lifetime, a lifetime of never ever ever being able to stop, to rest, to catch up-- to just keep pushing through, barely, barely, consumed by the balancing that never stops... only for the people you trusted most in your life to turn around and betray you. Oof... even seeing the signs from the very first page didn't prepare me for the heartbreak of this story. It's so gut-wrenchingly painful, and probably the only story of all five in this book that really left on this desperately terrible, horrible, sad ending. And yet, such a necessary one. A necessary one, to truly convey to those who do not understand what it is that some people go through, what their every single instance of consciousness is like, and how mistreated, how desperately hopeful and burnt out and fragile those perpetually burning candles of some people are. It's a wailing, a dirge for the suffering constantly going on around us, and I loved this story so much for it. For showing an existence that hurts, but that is so, so relevant to so many.
Save Changes
This story is so simple, but really had me bouncing all over the place with my feelings (in a good way). It had me suspicious as hell at the beginning when we met the main character's mother, because *squints* but the commitment really did present a horrifying possibility, one that isn't unrealistic to conceive, considering the type of technological advances in this world, especially harkening back to the first story of this collection, The Memory Librarian, and the evidence of damage that can happen to individuals taken by New Dawn. But this story is another one that excels at misleading you, because I started off being on the main character's side entirely against their sister, only to flip my thoughts entirely, until I was finding myself siding with her sister and defending her entirely. It's such a lovely portrayal of the fact that sometimes your siblings are actually so much more than you perceive them as, and I love that the tale was able to eventually get them to understand and respect one another. Though I will say, the low-key anxiety about our main character using her father's gift at the wrong time made me be like, "You had me in the first half, not gonna lie!" because I thought for SURE she was going to fuck it up. The fact that things played out the way they did... I was ready to shake our main character so badly at the end. Kudos, big kudos on leading me on the way you did. And also, love the further exploration of natural entities and powers in the world being utilized outside just our advanced technology. A sweet, if sometimes exasperating story.
Timebox Altar(ed)
The best way I can describe this short story is to say that it's as if the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII was mixed with The Animatrix's episode Beyond, the Witches from A Wrinkle in Time, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I mean that in the BEST kind of way. This was such a fun and hopeful, healing story after some of the brutally real threat and despair in the stories that came before it, and I think the author couldn't have ended the book on a better note. It was beautiful and fun and whimsical and made my heart fill with love and fire, with passion and determination. This is what we fight for. This is what we need to remember when we step out into the world. When we are given the chance to choose silence and obedience, or to speak out and create something better. We have the chance every single day, every single moment, to be better. And this book really did fill me with that. What a fantastic way to end. This book is going straight into my shopping cart, because I absolutely need it in my library, right now. And everyone, everyone, should read it.