Today would be Octavia E. Butler’s 71st birthday. I’ve only read a few of her books, but she has a special place in the SF/Fantasy canon. Her work wrestled with difficult issues like racism, sexual assault, and the heritage of slavery.
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The book that impressed me most was Kindred. The narrator, Dana is an African-American woman in 1976, who keeps getting pulled back in time to the colonial era. Each time, she’s in a position to save her white ancestor, Rufus, from life-threatening danger. She knows she has to keep him alive, at least long enough for his daughter Hagar to be born to a black woman, Alice. It’s the kind of paradox you see in time travel stories, but it’s not really what the book is about.
Kindred is about oppression, and what it does to the soul of both the oppressor and oppressed. When Dana first meets Rufus, he’s a friendly, open-hearted child who is “never” going to be like his slave-master father. He and Alice are friends. But each time Dana returns, privilege has warped Rufus with a greater sense of entitlement. He wants Alice’s love, but he’ll settle for rape.
Alice, too, is shaped by the structures of oppression. At one point she’s offered a choice: submit to ongoing rape as Rufus’s “mistress,” or endure being whipped into submission. (Dana notes that there’s a third option, running away.) We’d all like to believe we’d be the one to fight or run. But it’s a lot harder to be brave when you’re the one actually facing the whip.
Parable of the Sower is a dystopian novel dealing with the US falling into violent near-anarchy. Its sequel, Parable of the Talents, has “law and order” restored by a demagogue. The narrator, Lauren, is one of many deemed undesirable in the new regime. Along with her chosen family and many others, she is locked away in a secret camp where they are forced to so slave labor, the women are raped, and their children are stolen. Sound familiar?
One eerily prescient touch: written in 1998, the book has the demagogue spouting a suitably authoritarian slogan: “Make America Great Again.” Yes, really.
On to Top Comments!
From ursulafaw:
I am sending this comment by kurious, which was in my diary, "Zara, Brand That Made Melania's Jacket..." I like the comment because it says it all. Everybody is trying to exculpate Melania, as usual, and this comment cuts through the usual smoke screen and lies and bottom lines it.
From IndieGuy:
Tortmaster owes me a new keyboard.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter:
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