The Memory Librarian
Janelle Monáe
Hardcover / Trade Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780063070875
Harper Voyager, April 2022, 336 pages

Greetings everyone, it’s time for another review! For this month we’ll be looking at a book I was quite excited to read when I first heard of it, and it did not disappoint—The Memory Librarian, by Janelle Monáe.

Now, a lot of people probably know Monáe through her singing or acting careers, but I am quite pleased to say that she is just as talented, if not more so, as a science fiction writer (along with the other contributors to the book, who she collaborated with on all but one of the stories, and includes an impressively diverse cast). The Memory Librarian is no vanity project put out by someone riding their fame in another field; instead, it is a triumphant collection of five short stories that confidently weave complex themes and layers into an immersive whole. Set in the world of Monáe’s concept album Dirty Computer, The Memory Librarian further explores the album’s examinations of sexuality, gender identity, racism, and the end-stage capitalist panopticon police state, just to name a few. (I told you this thing has layers.)

The first thing that struck me about The Memory Librarian is how splendidly and unapologetically subversive it is in its central motif, which is the question, “Why am I wrong for wanting to be free and happy?,” a question always pertinent to ask when fascism seeks to regain its iron fist. In the Dirty Computer universe, people who don’t comply with the rigid boxes and clean lines society (white, male, hetero-normative) demands of them are labeled “dirty,” “bugged,” or “dangerous,” and are seen as things to be forced back in line regardless of the damage doing so causes. Whether it be the Memory Librarian herself, subject of the first story and vulnerable to the power of the state despite how much of it she personally wields; a non-binary addition to a feminist collective struggling with the advent of exclusionism within their own; or a group of children growing up in the shadow of acceptable social violence, the heart of each piece deals with the struggle to be accepted and known for who a person really is, rather than what others think they ought to be.

Naturally, this struggle involves dealing with trauma, both on the personal level as well as the pervasive political level, but despite how dystopic the world of The Memory Librarian can get at times, there is always a shining undercurrent of hope (perhaps best exemplified by the final short story in which a group of children realize that they have to imagine a better future in order to build it, no matter how bad the present). This is not a book that wallows in oppression voyeurism. Instead, it shines a spotlight on the bleeding edges and raw wounds of what oppression delivers, and then looks to patch them up with courage, wonder, and the belief that things can change for the better if a community can but take the necessary steps. That freedom is worth the fight to get there, and that the fight isn’t necessarily always with guns and fists.

In fact, that leads me to another thing I greatly enjoyed about The Memory Librarian, which was its constant usage of art in the stories as means of both self-expression and as a weapon to fight back against oppression (also delightfully meta-contextual as well, considering not just Monáe’s album that the universe was initially created in, but also the music videos that accompanied it). It’s clear that Monáe understands art is about creating your own box, no matter how weird its color or shape, not being crammed into someone else’s, and if art is in the soul, then expressing that soul cannot be a one-size-fits-all affair. There is a reason that systems of control throughout history go after the arts first, and more than a few tyrants have been toppled by the painter’s brush or a poet’s words.

Ultimately, The Memory Librarian is an inspired collection of stories that acknowledge the myriad flaws of our imperfect present while keeping focus on a brighter future—one where there is no such thing as “bad code” or “dirty programming” in a person’s skin color or sexuality, simply people living their best lives in a society that values them for it. I highly encourage everyone to check this one out, and I can’t wait to see what fantastic art Monáe creates next.

Read if: you don’t mind some bugs in your bytes; you recognize the violence inherent in the system; you like that no one is ever just one thing, both in fiction and reality.