Charles H. Rowell, "An Interview with Octavia E. Butler", Callaloo20.1. 1997, pp.47–66. JSTOR 3299291. Butler maintained a longstanding relationship with the Huntington Library and bequeathed her papers including manuscripts, correspondence, school papers, notebooks, and photographs to the library in her will. [37] The collection, comprising 9,062 pieces in 386 boxes, 1 volume, 2 binders and 18 broadsides, was made available to scholars and researchers in 2010. [38] Themes [ edit ] Critique of present-day hierarchies [ edit ] Reviewers also commented favorably on Butler's reinvention of the vampire figure, with Ron Charles of The Washington Post arguing that " Fledgling doesn't just resurrect the pale trappings of vampire lore, it completely transforms them in a startlingly original story about race, family and free will." [1] While reviewing the novel for the journal Gothic Studies, Charles L. Crow noted that "[while] Fledgling may be the least Gothic of Butler's fictions.... Butler makes unsettling demands of the reader, as always, and we must at the beginning accept as narrator and heroine a vampire whose first act is to kill and eat a man who is trying to help her." [6] Octavia E. Butler. (2017, April 28). Biography; A&E Television Networks. https://www.biography.com/writer/octavia-e-butler Shori and Wright accompany Iosif to his home, which is a compound filled with houses and people. Although Shori has no recollection of the community, everyone there is happy to see her and relieved that she is alive. Iosif immediately begins to answer Shori’s questions of who and what she is. He explains that she is Ina, an ancient race, and explains, “We have our own traditionsour own folklore, our own religions.” Similar to vampires of folklore, Ina must feed on human blood to survive, but they do not harm the human. They are taller and thinner than humans, with advanced senses. Ina live for hundreds of years and awaken only at night.

Nittle, Nadra (November 4, 2022). "Octavia Butler's middle school has been renamed in her honor". The 19th. Fledgling is a science fiction vampire novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, published in 2005. [1] [2] [3] [4] Plot [ edit ] Human trials are often games to see which lawyer is best able to use the law, the jury’s beliefs and prejudices, and his own theatrical ability to win.”

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on the matter of sex: while shori is allowed to have sex with her symbionts, she is not yet allowed to have sex with other vampires, even though there is tremendous attraction between young male vampires and herself. i think she’d probably be around 16 in vampire age, and she’s too young to mate. for one, she couldn’t reproduce, for two, she’s just too young. the rules of proper-age mating hold just fine in the intra-vampire world. a b c d e f g h i Kilgore, De Witt Douglas, and Ranu Samantrai. "A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler." Science Fiction Studies 37.3 (November 2010): 353–361. JSTOR 25746438. Crossley, Robert. "Critical Essay." In Kindred, by Octavia Butler. Boston: Beacon, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8070-8369-7

that guy who wants to be President, that Jarret, he would call you all heathens or pagans or something […] He does seem to enjoy calling people things like that. Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.” kindred Women Writing Sci-Fi: From Brave New Worlds ". YouTube. Clip from 1993 TV documentary Brave New Worlds: The Science Fiction Phenomenon featuring Robert Silverberg, Karen Joy Fowler, and Octavia Butler discussing science fiction in the 1970s These complications of agency, Bast argues, mean that Fledgling is "openly asking whether the highest degree of agency is automatically the most desirable state of being or whether there is a higher potential for happiness in choosing a specific kind of dependence". [15] Childhood [ edit ] Bloodchild" (novelette), "The evening and the morning and the night" (novelette), "Near of kin", "Speech sounds", "Crossover", "Positive obsession" (essay), "Furor scribendi" (essay), "Amnesty" (novelette, added in 2005), "The Book of Martha" (added in 2005)

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Human beings fear difference,’ Lilith had told him once. ‘Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.’ And she had put her hand on his hair. ‘When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.’” Imago Now More than Ever, We Wish We Had These Lost Octavia Butler Novels". Electric Literature. August 10, 2017 . Retrieved June 6, 2022.

As a kind ofcastawaymyself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.” He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsense—as it often is.”Bloodchild and Other Stories (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1995; Seven Stories Press, 2005), collection of 4 short stories (1 added in 2005), 3 novelettes (1 added in 2005) and 2 essays: Butler, Octavia E. "Afterword to Crossover." Bloodchild and Other Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press. 1996. p.120. Octavia E. Butler Papers". oac.cdlib.org. Online Archives of California . Retrieved January 11, 2017. The intensity of Shori’s desire for connection becomes clearer when she, within days of waking up, meets and moves in with Wright Hamlin, a white construction worker. “I didn’t want to stop talking to him,” she thinks during their first encounter. “I felt almost as hungry for conversation as I was for food.” Through their initial, awkward interactions, she learns that her maturity and libido don’t align with her underage appearance, and as she realizes how enticing Wright smells, their relationship shifts from mildly affectionate to erotic.

In an interview with Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!, Butler explained that she had written Fledgling as a diversion after becoming overwhelmed by the grimness of her Parable series. [17] To distract herself, she had read vampire fantasy novels, which tempted her to try writing one. As she explained in an interview with Allison Keyes, it took her a while to find the focus of the novel until a friend suggested that what vampires wanted, besides human blood, was the ability to walk in the sun. She then decided to create vampires as a separate species and have them engineer the capacity to withstand sunlight by adding human melanin to their DNA. [18] Biological rather than supernatural, the Ina do not turn humans into vampires. [6] [7] They are not ruthless, threatening, predatory, intimidating, or generally antagonistic to humans. [8] Instead, they create close-knit Ina-human communities where they cohabitate with selected humans in symbiotic relationships. [7] In fact, as Pramrod Nayar notes, Butler creates an alternate history where humans and Ina have always coexisted in "non-hierarchic, interdependent and unified ecosystems". [9] Today brings word of another Butler adaptation in the works: HBO Max is adapting her vampire novel Fledgling for a series. Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower – An opera by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon" . Retrieved June 24, 2020. Young, Hershini Bhana. "Performing the Abyss: Octavia Butler's Fledgling and the Law." Studies in the Novel 47.2 (2015): 210+.

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Starting in 1974, Butler worked on a series of novels that would later be collected as the Patternist series, which depicts the transformation of humanity into three genetic groups: the dominant Patternists, humans who have been bred with heightened telepathic powers and are bound to the Patternmaster via a psionic chain; their enemies the Clayarks, disease-mutated animal-like superhumans; and the Mutes, ordinary humans bonded to the Patternists. [25] Most Humans lose access to old memories as they acquire new ones. They know how to speak, for instance, but they don’t recall learning to speak. They keep what experience has taught them—usually—but lose the experience itself.”