Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - Major Themes

Major Themes

Power: Stars is in someway a re-imagining of the slave narrative. However, unlike the non-fiction, autobiographical retrospectives which make up the body of the style, such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Stars moves this narrative into the future. Delany chooses the word "slave" to describe the life of the R.A.T.s, and this term anchors Rat Korga's story in heavy historical and sexual connotations. Stars is very much a book about power, and it explores the implications and complications of slavery, inter-species relationships (in lieu of inter-racial ones), cultural conflict, sexual persecution, as well as the role of information as power.

Race: The character of Rat Korga may be conceived as a black character, though his skin color is described only as "red-brown". This description of his skin is also juxtaposed with that of a woman who buys and sexually enslaves him, who is described as "brown with little red at all". As a character who undergoes slavery, oppression, removal from information, and generally being perceived as an "Other," Korga achieves racialization without any explicit race. This racializition is of particular interest to those who study Afrofuturism, since the lack of any explicitly black bodies in Stars may be seen as an impediment to the book being considered an Afrofuturistic work. Also interesting to consider is the only explicit reference to his genotypic racial identity. One character estimates that "almost thirty percent of ancestry was white," but it goes unmentioned, and unasked, what the remaining seventy percent may be. Though he is human, and all his ancestry originates from Earth and its various racial groups, the only identity by which he is measured is the degree of his whiteness. It is also notable, however, that this mention of his race happens in passing, perhaps to downplay the importance of genetic history.

Discrimination: On Velm bestiality is legal, and is practiced publicly, freely and without derision. This contrasts with Rhyonon, where such conduct is illegal. At one point, however, natives of another planet blatantly gossip about, and criticize, the bestiality practices of Velm's inhabitants. They display discriminatory attitudes towards non-humans, calling them "beasts" and "animals" for reducing themselves to the level of non-human sentients, while considering themselves "purer" for not doing so. When Marq complains about this, Korga criticizes him, saying that one cannot feel truly discriminated against if one wasn't born on, and hasn't grown up on, a world were such actions "were legally proscribed". Delany draws a parallel here with homosexuality (both were illegal on Rhyonon and both are legal and freely accepted on Velm); one does not fully experience verbal discrimination without having suffered the realities of social and legal discrimination.

Gender: Completely transforming the strict male/female paradigm in the reader’s world, Delany shows how gender, especially with the presence of alien species, is incredibly fluid, changing from planet to planet. On Rhyonon (where slavery is legal and several levels of sexual discrimination exist), gender is likened to present Western civilization, defined by biological sex. However, on Velm (and in many other worlds, presumably), gender is defined by desire. The default pronoun for all beings is female ("she" or "her"), unless one is the object of one’s attraction, in which case “she” becomes “he.” This is, quite intentionally, extremely confusing for the reader and eventually functions to completely alter the view of Marq Dyeth’s narrative voice (which, unless serious effort is put forth, simply becomes a womanly figure). Homosexuality is tolerated in the more developed worlds, but because desire is what defines gender, each person who has sex with another would view the act as “a woman (themselves) having sex with a man.” Delany's project here is clear: identity, whether it is signified by gender, race or any other attribute is incredibly fluid, and creating distinct labels only serves to limit the way in which people can express and define themselves. In making this notion explicit through his many worlds, Delany’s text deconstructs the reader’s faith in any “concrete” identity-based institution in the present. Race and gender are important themes in this text. It is commonplace for Delany to bend the "rules" with this subjects. He is interested in exploring gender fluidity which he addressed in his novel Trouble on Triton The protagonist in that text actually undergoes sexual reassignment and becomes a woman which leads him to a host of difficulties and dissatisfaction since it was done for the wrong reasons. However Delany seems to be proposing with both of these novels that in the future gender won't be as rigid nor as important as the stock we give it now. Masculinity and femininity can coexist in one body without undermining the goal of that body and sexuality is also more loosely defined. What Delany doesn't really address in the way that I would expect a black science fiction author to is race. There is a clear hegemonic construction in this Universe that the characters inhabit, and they are mostly human. There is also a binary that seems in some ways racial driven. What is not clear is the notion of Blackness and the Black experience in this text and the characters who populate the novel expressing their experiences in those terms.

Sexuality: Delany explores individual sexuality as more than simply heterosexual or homosexual. Marq says that his "structure of desire" is "a beautiful universe" populated by a vast and unique collection of attractive and unattractive attributes. Desire, when explored, populates the universe around him with beauty and intrigue, as he notes in the world around him the specific things that are beautiful and desirable to him. Sexuality is intensely personal and multifaceted, a pattern of desire that guides interaction and defies simple categorization. Freedom/Desire: As in Trouble on Triton, the novel explores conflicting ideas about personal freedom and desire (Korga has voluntarily opted for a form of psychosurgery making him incapable of anxiety or independent thought), and definitions of gender (which is defined by desire, as described above). Like several of Delany's other works, it portrays a relationship between an intellectual and a disadvantaged person. It also includes extended digressions by Dyeth as the narrator, speaking to the reader about history, art, sex, politics and civilization.

Postsructuralism: The two galactic factions, the Sygn and the Family, are representations of opposing modes of thinking as conceived in poststructuralist philosophy. Societies aligned with the Family take the human nuclear family as the basic template for all human relations, of which all variants are considered imperfect copies; the nuclear family plays the role of the transcendental signified, a universal concept from which all other concepts are derived. Societies aligned with the Sygn reject any transcendental signified and instead focus on the idea that all ordering principles are contextual instead of universal; the Sygn emblem, the cyhnk, symbolizes this through the fact that cyhnks from different Sygn groups share a similar underlying structure but always differ in detail, with no one version of the cyhnk considered the ideal form. Reflecting these philosophical orientations, Family societies tend toward hierarchical organization, while Sygn societies tend toward networks of exchange among equals. (The two metaphorically come into conflict in the novel's dinner party sequence. A Velmian dinner party is based on guests exchanging food in a pattern of constant circulation. In the relevant scene, the dinner is attended by the Thants, a family which has long had friendly relations with the Dyeths, but which has recently become the "focus unit" for a Family world, Nepiy. Assuming a position of superiority to the other guests, they refuse to accept food from them, bringing the process to an awkward halt.)

Survivorship: Korga is considered the sole survivor of cultural fugue on Rhyonon. However, he was underground at the time, invisible and excluded from Rhyonon’s society. Korga’s survivor status is thus complicated by his marginalized identity: while Rhyonon was never “home” for him, he is its last representative. Marq and Japril consider the exact number of cultural fugue survivors on Rhyonon “impossible” to know after accounting for Rhyonon-born people who were travelling abroad or had emigrated to nearby moons/worlds, and also for visitors/returnees whose flights were canceled or deflected moments before its destruction. Unlike Korga, these “survivors” of Rhyonon had freedom and wealth to travel or emigrate. Therefore, Korga’s class differences also make his survivor status problematic. Marq and Japril begin calling Korga “our survivor” instead of simply “the survivor,” showing how Korga is still being owned or claimed.

Culture: Marq Dyeth's occupation as a Industrial Diplomat takes him across the galaxy, and his access to General Information provides him with anything he needs to know about their cultures. The novel is sprinkled with innumerable references to the cultural gestures and traditions of faraway worlds. Often the narrator will describe a character's actions, and then describe the many other, often opposite, meanings the same gesture has on other worlds. Social norms of decorum and politeness are also contrasted, with characters noting the strangeness and apparent illogical nature of foreign practices.