Advertisement
Books

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe: A clarion call for disenfranchised people

From Janelle Monáe, terrifically-built worlds lead readers to ask: What would you do with more time?

The Memory Librarian is out now (Harper Voyager)

Time travel plays a big part in The Memory Librarian by musician and all-round force of nature Janelle Monáe.

This collection of five stories is co-written by Monáe with a fine selection of female or non-binary writers of colour, and is an expansion of the speculative world created in her 2018 Dirty Computer album and the accompanying ‘emotion picture’. In a dystopian future, New Dawn control the population and monitor everyone’s thoughts and actions.

Difference is viewed as a crime, and those deemed to be different are ‘dirty computers’, cleansed of their memories via drugs. But amid this authoritarian rule there are pockets of resistance – young, marginalised people fighting to be individuals in a world set against them. 

The world-building across these tales is terrific and evocative, and the ability to manipulate time threads through three of them. What would you do with more time? What could you change in the past or create in the future? These stories are a clarion call for the disenfranchised of today’s world, and provide an optimistic view of a better way to live going forward. Stirring stuff. 

Doug Johnstone is a journalist and author

You can buy The Memory Librarian from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertisement

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

Read All
Comedy Samurai by Larry Charles review – the joyous, painful business of making people laugh
Books

Comedy Samurai by Larry Charles review – the joyous, painful business of making people laugh

Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland review – Dexys lynchpin bares his sensitive soul
Books

Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland review – Dexys lynchpin bares his sensitive soul

Why I cut ties with my alcoholic dad
Addiction

Why I cut ties with my alcoholic dad

Top 5 books set in theatres, chosen by playwright Edward Carey
Books

Top 5 books set in theatres, chosen by playwright Edward Carey

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue