octavia e butler kindred fledgling collected stories

The last book Butler wrote, Fledgling, was completely different. It’s somehow more confronting in being told from the point of view of a modern black woman and poses the question of how easily can people be trained to accept slavery. This was nothing like any other slave memoirs or epics I’ve read or seen on film. He is nice to her but cannot see her as anything other than a man’s property. Although Rufus likes Dana and knows she is saving his life over and over he is still the product of his own upbringing. It is a very dangerous time and place for her, one which she has no training for and little understanding of. Dana, a 26 year old African American woman from 1976, is thrust back in time over and over to save the life of Rufus Weylin, the very white son of a Maryland plantation owner, so that he can go on and father her great-great grandmother. Butler is apparently a legend in the sci-fi community, her stories are a sort of blend of sci-fi, fantasy and horror - it’s an interesting combination of genres I don’t read very often. It contains two entire novels - the first and last books she wrote and a series of short stories and essays on the art of writing. Like the essays that were included, Butler's voice reflecting on her work adds a warmth that makes this feel like a personally curated selection of her stories. The short stories were a nice addition but the jewels in this Butler collection were hearing her own reflections on the writing of and meaning of those stories. Survival literally depended on having several close relationships and on physically touching and being touched, not necessarily in a sexual way but in a way that lets others in, allows for casual, caring contact.

In the isolation here of 2020, where human contact and connection is so reduced, I was particularly struck by the emphasis on a relationship structure where no person, no being, could survive on their own. I enjoyed Fledgling much more this time, finding more layers in the symbiotic relationship, the mutualism of the humans and vampires. I remember liking Fledgling when I first read it but also being somewhat disappointed, having hoped for another novel along the lines of the Earthseed series. Butler must have been an incredibly brave and resilient woman to take the journey she must have taken to write all those characters so sympathetically. The complexity of human relationships within the plantation slave economy on a day-to-day basis is vividly depicted. Reading Kindred nearly 20 years after I first read it, I recalled all over again what an education it was about life in the ante-bellum south. This collection is a necessary and meaningful recognition of Octavia Butler's brilliance as an author.

Octavia e butler kindred fledgling collected stories