The slavery interpretation the author couldnt escape.
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But many readers found a different kind of parable.
It amazes me that some people have seen Bloodchild as a story of slavery, Butler wrote.
She later recalled telling this to a college student who had written a paper on the topic.
Well, the author doesnt always know!
the young woman replied.
What are we to you?
he whispers, terrified.
You know me as no other does, the alien gently answers.
Yet she had often seemed to say so.
In this light, longtime fans could be forgiven for taking Bloodchild as one more of Butlers slave stories.
But there was another explanation for readers response.
OctaviaButler,asunderstoodby…
Her spectacular life.
.Her most misunderstood work.
Her writing style.
Her famous journal entry.
Its not hard to see why Butler might have been skeptical of slavery as a theme.
At the same time, the genre had all but sealed itself off to nonwhite characters during Butlers time.
(The experience would inspireher 1980 essay Lost Races of Science Fiction.)
Its not very good for storytelling.
Her prose, sometimes called spare, is just as often lackluster.
(A used copy can run you hundreds of dollars online.)
You will realize that there is no shame in your submission.
This was Butlers biggest issue withSurvivor: Humanity goes free.
It was a mistake she endeavored never to repeat.
So easy going in.
She undulated slowly against me, her muscles forcing the egg from her body into mine.
TGatoi hesitantly asks Gan if he has offered himself for spare his sister.
And to keep you for myself, he answers, nuzzling into her.
The question is not whether this qualifies as lovemaking but what kind of love is being made.
This is to respond to pigeonholing by overstating the value of being a pigeon.
For Butler, nothing was harder, or more important, than the act of writing.
For what do we think that literature actuallydoes?
What good is all this to Black people?
she asked again in the essays final line.
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