Science fiction has a new standard bearer and her name is N. K. Jemisin. I read The Fifth Season, the first in a series of three books (The Broken Earth Trilogy) and egad. As in: "Egad! This book is a whopper of literary might and sff brilliance!"
For a brief intro to the book, look here, on an archived post from Reddit. Because from here on out, I'm talking about the ideas and the techniques she's used in this book and I can't promise not to reveal spoilers.
Techniques:
The three main characters, whose stories are each told in a different point-of-view (POV) and tense, all share an emotional core that Jemisin remains true to from start to finish. No small feat in and of itself. But rather than confuse, the changing POV's and tenses actually add to the texture and depth of the main character(s): Damaya, Syenite, Essun.
These techniques reveal ideas on identity here, I'm sure.
How one character can actually hold three different identities at different points in their life. How oppression shapes our characters and how a character's identities must shift from one phase of life to the next, dependent upon outside circumstances and parameters. How a character's choices must, somehow, achieve some independence, some sense of free will, despite all of the systemized oppression pressing down on her, telling her what she should do.
One of Jemisin's hallmarks here is that by weaving these three narratives together, by creating a giant jigsaw puzzle for the reader, we achieve a sense of shared identity with the main character(s). And in so doing we begin to understand just the cusp of what she's ultimately trying to say.
Ideas:
All of the different enemies in this book are each in their own right a form of oppression. The enemy is the earth, the weather, the Fulcrum, the evil Guardians, the system, society itself with all of its everyday biases and systematized bigotries and false truths and false hopes, as well as a new unknown race, called stone-eaters, that are as supernaturally powerful and mysterious as angels but who have their own intents and who use humans (including Essun?) to their own ends.
As the main character(s) is battling with all of these different enemies, so we also begin to realize just how greatly and brutally Essun's character(s) is shaped by the oppressive, antagonistic forces around her. That, I believe, in the following installments, is how Essun will ultimately complete her journey: she will overcome the parts of her self which have been outraged, numbed, chopped-up and brutalized by all of the varying forms of oppression and she will achieve a "true self" and a new future from the forces which fear her and try to make her into a tool.
That is my hope.
You are all you need as Jemisin states. There are many similar snippets of sing-song phrasing in this book, however they all become pregnant with meaning by the end. This particular saying is Jemisin's small blip of hope in an unfair, terribly violent world where the forces of oppression and brutality are colossal, however not entirely unbeatable.