N. K. Jemisin on H. P. Lovecraft, and Jill Lepore on the End of a Pandemic

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Books, Society & Culture, Remnick, Storytelling, Wnyc, News, David, Yorker, Arts, Politics, New

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

N. K. Jemisin has faced down a racist backlash to her success in the science-fiction community. But white supremacy in the genre is nothing new, she tells Raffi Khatchadourian. Her recent novel “The City We Became” explicitly addresses the legacy of the genre pioneer H. P. Lovecraft, whose racism was virulent even by the standards of the early twentieth century. It’s not possible, Jemisin says, to separate Lovecraft’s ideology from his greatness as a fantasy writer: his view of nonwhite peoples as monstrous informed the way he wrote about monsters. Rather than try to ignore or cancel Lovecraft, Jemisin felt compelled to engage with him. Plus, the historian and staff writer Jill Lepore describes the desperate measures taken to protect children from polio during a pandemic no less frightening than our own, and how the disease was then forgotten.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.3	What is he said he found out where her family came from.
0:21.6	He wanted me to come home so I could go there with him.
0:24.6	He's still obsessing over her ancestry.
0:28.6	I thought he'd given all that up when she passed.
0:35.6	I know that like your mother. You think that you can forget the past.
0:41.3	He can't.
0:43.3	The past is a living thing.
0:45.3	You own it, owe it.
0:47.3	Now, I have found something about your mother's forebears.
0:50.3	You have a sacred, secret legacy, a birthright that's been kept from you.
0:56.3	That's strange. That doesn't really even sound like your father.
0:58.4	I haven't even gotten to the strange part.
1:02.9	The place he wants me to go with him is in Lovecraft Country.
1:09.4	The new show, Lovecraft Country, is not exactly about the writer H.P. Lovecraft, but it's set in the kind of
1:17.0	fictional world that Lovecraft pioneered, a world of horror and fantastical beings, and ancient evil.
1:24.8	Lovecraft died in 1937, but it's getting a lot of attention in 2020. In addition to this
1:31.0	new show that bears his name, the science fiction writer N.K. Jemison published a book this year
1:36.0	that's very much a response to H.P. Lovecraft. It's called The City We Became. On a very windy
1:42.8	day last winter, N.K. Jemison met up with staff writer Rafi Kach
1:47.0	Dorian on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge because the city we became
	...

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