Instructor's Note: The Debt That Cannot Be Paid

Anger, Identity, and the Limits of Grievance (pp. 230–239)

There is a difference between anger and debt collection. Anger is a legitimate and necessary response to violation, and it is the self asserting that something wrong was done and that the perpetrator should be held accountable. I mention this because healthy anger has a direction: it points toward the source of the harm and demands reckoning from the right place. Debt collection, however, is something else entirely. Debt collection is what happens when the anger outlives its original target and when the wound becomes so central to identity that the formerly harmed begins extracting payment from anyone in proximity to the original crime. Essentially, it doesn’t matter whether they are directly responsible, because someone must pay. N.K. Jemisin, on pages 230 through 239 of The Kingdom of Gods, draws this distinction by placing two formerly enslaved beings in the same scene and showing us exactly how each has used the same wound.