User:Helectronic/sandbox

Vampires Aliens, and Dodos, by Elizabeth A. Lynn

• Main theme: what it means to be a human.
• Contrast between Doro and Anyanwu, and the ways in which she is a match for him.
• Description of Butler's writing style, and the way historical context lends sense of realism to the novel.

"Immortality, shape-changing, psychic powers, the passing of one mind into many bodies: these are not new ideas to the science fiction canon, and the theme of what it means to be human has fascinated sf writers since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein." This quote could go to themes, as well as reception.

"Butler's prose is sparse and sure, and even in moments of great tension she never loses control over her pacing or over her sense of story." This quote describes Butler's style of writing, which could become its own section on Wikipedia.

Octavia Estelle Butler (b. 1947), by Pfeiffer

• Wild Seed allowed Butler to write about black women being able to overcome things in a bigger way, because Anyanwu's immortality and powers allowed her to do more than just survive, but to fight back and make greater strides.
• Main struggle (between Doro and Anyanwu) is more about gender than race.
• However, Anyanwu's struggles parallel slavery in some ways, like her passage from Africa to America, and, is a theme of the book: Anyanwu needing to disguise herself as a white man at times for safety.
• Doro isn't lovable, but he and Anyanwu seem like each other's perfect balance, so there's a wish for them to love each other.

"Doro looms as a symbol of the perversity of male-dominated human history." This quote could go to themes. It's clear at this point that gender and the patriarchal society is a big theme of Wild Seed, and this could help support that.

"Butler said that in Kindred she 'couldn't change history--at least not in the kind of book I had chosen to write. So my characters couldn't realistically win much more than their lives. But in Wild Seed, a different sort of book, my characters could be powerful enough to move somewhat outside the ugliness of antebellum U.S. history even though they live through it. Their struggle is more male-female than Black-White.'" This quote is interesting because it comes directly from Butler, and talks about how the way the specific kind of sf/fantasy in Wild Seed allowed her to break some of the realism boundaries. This can also talk about themes, as well as background because it talks about Butler's motivations in writing the book.

Wild Seed, by Michael Bishop

• Bishop responds to an old criticism of Survivor by Cherry Wilder, and how Wild Seed addresses/fixes these objections
• Talks about the conflicts of duty vs. desire, conscience vs. expediency, and both longing for power and disgust at witnessing its abuse.
• Themes are revealed organically through the characters
• Bishop is impressed by the way she takes some familiar conventions and makes them her own, and how she lends realism by dealing more with the past than the future.
• He doesn't like that she doesn't go into scenes and new settings as much as she could, but acknowledges that she has a minimalist approach overall and he maybe shouldn't criticize her for not doing something she purposefully doesn't want to do.

"A love story, then, but one in which love in annihilated by betrayal, threat, and active cruelty, only to reassert itself, tentatively, in Anyanwu's melancholy acceptance of Doro's inhuman nature." Bishop is one of the only people to talk about this as a love story, if a twisted one, so I think this could be an interesting inclusion in talking about themes.

"Butler makes her minimalist approach work in the same way a skillful playwright exploits the possibilities of a naked stage." If we write a section on Butler's style in Wild Seed, this passage could go to it.

Connections, Links, and Extended Networks: Patterns in Octavia Butler’s Science Fiction, by Sandra Y. Govan

• Butler's interest in power developed because she didn't have any, and she was interested in writing about its politics and dynamics.
• Biggest power struggle is between Doro and Anyanwu, and all of Butler's novels seem to share basic theme of a heroine going through tests of her will and endurance.
• Doro breeds people and manipulates people, like Anyanwu, to obey him in his seed towns.
• Doro is eventually forced to bow to Anyanwu's will when she threatens to commit suicide, something he could not prevent by threatening her or by his dominance. She doesn't do this to manipulate him, but he nonetheless changes his ways somewhat.
• Butler is noteworthy in using black characters in a way almost never seen in sf/fantasy, and if they are, they're generally stereotypical. Wild Seed not only uses black protagonists, but uses settings like Africa and African history, and discusses slavery in America.
• They replicate their kinship in relationship with fellow mutants in Doro's seed villages and Anyanwu's farm in Louisiana.
• Discussion of the books Mind of My Mind, Survivor, Patternmaster, and Kindred, and the way the heroines also follow the "model" Anyanwu does. They all share the themes of adaptability, survival, and difference in their narratives. They are also paired with/contrasted a powerful male figure, again going to the theme of power and gender differences.

Govan, Sandra Y. "Connections, Links, and Extended Networks: Patterns in Octavia Butler's Science Fiction." Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Summer 1984): 82-84.

Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel, by Sandra Y. Govan

• Butler borrows from tradition, and seems to look more at the past in her sf writing. This isn't innovative in itself: what is is the way she links it specifically to the African experience and black slave experience.
• Slave narratives in general aware of "double consciousness", warring selves.
• Butler explores intersection of slave narrative, historical novel, & science fiction. Built on conventions of these genres, but defies expectations in the way the genres merge, the sf making a kind of parallel/alternate history.
• Themes: alienation, loneliness, ambition, power, love. Africa provides cultural background. History and culture is more than just background - it tells you a lot about the characters, etc, and puts a more original twist on some of the themes.
• Wild Seed's conflict - Doro trying to make Anyanwu submissive, and her fighting back.
• Kinship huge theme - Doro doesn't follow any cultural belief. He only cares about breeding stock. Anyanwu also cares about mutant connections, but makes something more like an extended family based on those she wants to gather around her and help.
• A black woman protagonist featured - doesn't yield integrity or submit to a man.
• History is integral to plot, and novel grounded in cultural history.

Quote # 1: "Anyanwu's sense of protection, her maternal instinct of care and concern for her people, is part of the African ethos which pervades the text. Of paramount importance to Anyanwu is the well being and safety of her kin - her children and her grandchildren. (...) Doro's power play, his perception of the most immediate method he can use to control Anyanwu reflects his understanding of cultural ties, of the "appropriate manner and customs" which are part of Anyanwu's historical legacy." (85-86)

• This can come up when we talk about the themes of gender and the essential conflict between Anyanwu and Doro, and also if there is a section on the role African culture plays in the novel.

Quote # 2: "African kinship networks seem to be the major structural device Butler uses to build dramatic complexity in this novel. When the principal characters first meet, the question of identity is crucial. Following the customary 'who are you?' comes the equally important 'who are your people?' The latter question springs from the African sense of connectedness to a specific place, a specific people, or a specific heritage." (86)

• Like the above, this quote could build on a section about the African culture explored in Wild Seed, as well as a specific theme of kinship/family/etc that crops up with Doro's seed villages, Anyanwu's community in Louisiana, and the ultimate goal both characters are trying to reach by finding others with special abilities.

Quote # 3: "'Wheatley' is an allusion to young Phillis Wheatley, the child stolen from Africa who became known as the 'Sable Muse' and was recognized as a significant contributor to the 18th-century American poetry." (87)

• This could be an interesting bit for the Background section, as well as themes when once again talking about race in Wild Seed.

Govan, Sandra Y. "Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel." MELUS 13.1/2 (Spring-Summer 1986): 79-96.

Octavia Butler and the Science-Fiction Heroine, by Ruth Salvaggio

• Science fiction traditionally dominated by men - more recently, women authors have become more prominent. Butler is both an example of that and something new: her female protagonists are black, and her stories talk about the dynamic of both race and gender in society.
• All of Butler's protagonists are black, but Anyanwu is the only one born in Africa. She provides a foundation for all of Butler's protagonists, just as the events of Wild Seed provide a foundation for what comes in the Patternist series, even though it wasn't the first book written.
• Anyanwu is a slave to Doro in many ways. After running away from him, she lives in Louisiana and runs a plantation, but in slave territory she runs a free household with a family of other outsiders with special abilities. When Doro finds her, he again imposes his will upon her and her people.
• Doro has more power than Anyanwu when it comes to being able to control others, but she has more flexibility with hers. He can live forever and change form by killing people and take over their bodies, but she is able to survive in her original body by healing herself and changing her appearance. In general, Butler contrasts Doro's more blunt force with Anyanwu's more adaptable, healing powers.
• All of the stories talk about the protagonists' struggles to gain that autonomy. Unlike many feminist sf novels of the time that were set in utopias, these characters face enormous obstacles of sexism and racism. The women win by compromises, and instead of women "replacing" men in terms of power, they fight to change the power structure. For example, in Wild Seed Doro isn't killed, but he is ultimately changed by Anyanwu and they both make compromises.
• Context: Second Wave feminism.

Salvaggio, Ruth. "Octavia Butler and the Black Science-Fiction Heroine." Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (1984): 78-81.

“I began writing about power because I had so little": The Impact of Octavia Butler’s Early Work on feminist Science Fiction as a Whole (and on One Feminist Science Fiction Scholar in Particular), by Rebecca J. Holden

• This was written in 2013. Holden was introduced to Butler in the mid-90s, in research for her dissertation on feminist science fiction
• Butler drew on African mythology and slave narrative; was like nothing else in sf at the time. Holden argues Butler had a major influence on the genre.
• Holden goes over some history of feminist sf - in the 60s and 70s, it was primarily utopias where gender discrimination didn't exist. Women of color weren't really represented - even if they were present, women were more seen as a monolith. Black women, in general, were less visible; the civil rights movement focusing more on black men, and the feminist movement on white women. These two groups were often pit against each other, leaving black women ignored yet still expected to "pick a side". Butler refused to do so, and that's reflected in the themes in her work.
• Holden talks about term "cyborg identity", introduced by Donna Haraway, and how it applies to Butler's work and heroines. It's a pushback against some of those feminist utopias, and also dystopias, as well as the gender essentialism of the stereotypical "Earth Mother" idea. It takes both positive and negative qualities of technology.
• Butler uses themes of mutation, genetic engineering, etc, without losing culture. History informs these characters.
• In Patternmaster, Butler de-emphasizes race and gender, but not in the "feminist utopia" way other sf writers often did. She still focuses on power, and its only those without power (with weak or no abilities) or outside of the norm whose race is described/emphasized. This relates to the way whiteness (and maleness) is seen as the default. In Mind of My Mind, this power difference and the way it has come to replace race is highlighted more clearly. Butler isn't writing an allegory or a parallel to race, because racial issues aren't entirely absent in her world. There are just additional things at play.
• There's some criticism of strict gender roles, particularly in Wild Seed (i.e. Anyanwu nurturing and Doro domineering)
• Butler contributed to feminist sf not just by having black heroines, but by the themes she wrote about, and how there were no easy answers but just complex questions posed and compromises made by Anyanwu in Wild Seed. Butler shifted trend away from utopias.

Quote # 1: "Butler's choice of black female protagonists, emphasis on biological technologies and disease, and incorporation of African-American history, forces readers and writers of feminist sf to step back and acknowledge historical, cultural, and socio-economic differences among women. Her refusal to reduce her complex characters with their multiple narratives of identity to simple, more recognizable heroines reveals true alternatives for imagining feminist stories of the past and future."

• I think this quote is important because it eloquently states something many articles have said so far, and speaks both to reception (why Butler's work is so groundbreaking and speaks to so many) and themes, in some of the complexities Butler is bringing into her work.

Quote # 2: "An initial glance at Anyanwu's story may align her with the "archetypal" mother figures, such as those found in Gearhart's Wanderground where women are considered to be naturally less violent, more nurturing, more connected to nature, less competitive, and more communal than men. Critics writing in the 1980s often stressed what they saw as the biologically-determined aspects of gender in Wild Seed. For example, Sandra Y. Govan states that Doro's "is the more terrible power; he kills instantaneously whenever he takes a host body. But (Anyanwu's] is the nurturing healing power of the archetypal earth mother" (1984, 83). Similarly, Ruth Salvaggio states that "Doro's paternal concerns revolve around his mechanical breeding experiments: He does not create children, but Frankenstein monsters. Anyanwu's maternity, however, is the main source of her being, the principal reason for her existence" (1984, 81). Some later critics, like Hoda Zaki, highlight the problems inherent in the gender essentialism that they see in the work of Butler and her contemporaries: "Butler, in describing her heroines as nurturing, freedomloving women who employ violence only for the sake of survival, shares with other feminist sf writers the same truncated assumptions about women's and men's natures even though she does not place gender concerns conspicuously at the center of her novels" (1990, 246)."

• Even though these are other quotes, not Holden's direct crit, they're more critical than anything else I've seen so far on Wild Seed. These quotes would be interesting to look more into for the Reception section, as well as themes when talking about gender and femininity/feminism. Holden's response to these criticisms, about the way Doro and morso Anyanwu subvert these gender roles, would also be good for the themes section.

"Sun Woman" or "Wild Seed?" How a Young Feminist Writer Found Alternatives to White Bourgeois narrative Models in the Early Novels of Octavia Butler, by L. Timmel Duchamp

• Also published in 2013
• Duchamp praises Butler's writing style and cites her influence on sf. Starts by mentioning Sam Delany's advice on writing (Delany was a mentor of Butler's). Delany mentioned absorbing writing models, not copying them but fully knowing them so you can write them subconsciously.
• Duchamp points out how much harder that can be if you mainly have white men in the existing canon. You don't want to write something that speaks to that experience instead of something more your own, but consciously doing something different for the sake of it would just sound forced. (Relates to Butler's bio about struggling to find her voice as a black woman sf writer.)
• Duchamp discusses how sf helps enable a writer to tackle newer ideas and social commentary without a preachy, forced feeling.
• Duchamp succeeds with a sf novel, and she later realizes that the model she'd absorbed was Wild Seed. It works as a model because 1) as a sf novel it can avoid an annoying overt message, 2) Doro and Anyanwu's conflict works on many different levels, not just about the individuals but about two different worldviews and it speaks to feminist theory, and 3) Anyanwu ends up negotiating with her oppressor instead of emerging a victor in a struggle for freedom. In other feminist novels at the time, the battles were won: including at times in a "win" where the woman committed suicide.
• When Duchamp first read it, she considered Wild Seed to be essentialist and Second Wave Feminism. Context: Third Wave Feminism emerging, interlocking oppression
• Everything Butler writes has subtext and many ways to analyze/look deeper, and a lot of context to understand the characters' pov and decisions they make.
• Butler's refusal to write heroines that can triumph ultimately makes the stories more complex and avoids the trap of following the (white) model.

Quote # 1: "The issue of generation is an index of their conflict. Both Doro and Anyanwu value generation, but generation means something entirely different to each of them. Within himself, Doro conflates the roles of father, master, and owner; he considers "his people" to be his children, slaves, and property. He insists that he has given "his children" their lives and thus has a right to take them when he wishes (202). Anyanwu scoffs at him when he casually refers to having created a man: "Did you create him, then? From what? Mounds of clay?" (123). Although Doro can only use others' bodies, he sees himself as physically reproducing by way of breeding his stock, reinforcing his conflation of the roles of father, master, and owner. As he tells Anyanwu, "I have lived for thirty-seven hundred years and fathered thousands of children. I have become a woman and borne children" (58). Throughout the novel, the narrative opposes Anyanwu's notions of parenting to Doro's constant claim to be father, owner, and master of those he claims to have created, as much by showing her actions and the power of her love as through her verbal opposition to Doro. He believes that childbearing makes women weak and vulnerable to domination (27); Anyanwu sees it as the source of great power and pleasure."

• The talk of generation, motherhood, and fatherhood, is a big theme in the novel that not as many articles have explored beyond the concept of breeding and gender empowerment. This quote could be very powerful and work well when talking about themes.

Quote # 2: "Doro constantly asserts his sovereignty as an individual and is certain that childbearing weakens women because it does not allow them to enjoy total individual sovereignty. Anyanwu, in contrast, sees her world as a plurality of relations and interdependence. Her position as a black woman in antebellum America, for instance, is complicated by her power to shapeshift, a gift which allows her to pass as a white male when she wishes. In a sense, her shapeshifting emblematizes the fluidity of her identity, though it's important to note that she never regards the transformation of her identity as a means of overcoming oppression: for her, neither blackness nor femaleness is inherendy inferior and thus passing, while sometimes expedient, offers no solution. If maternity and plurality make her "weak" as Doro believes, it's a weakness she is not only happy to live with but that she pities him the lack o£."

• This could also go to themes, in exploring the race and gender dynamics, as well as contradicting the criticism Holden brought up about the stereotypical gender roles Doro and Anyanwu represent in some ways. The quote shows how those are countered, and the way Butler talks about power and oppression in Wild Seed.

Quote # 3: "For Butler, the feminist story isn't an all-or-nothing struggle; it isn't simply about overthrowing patr1archy. Its about understanding how oppression works in all its complexity and finding ways to negotiate with what can't in the particular situation be changed."

• The state of feminist sf in the 60s and 70s has been brought up several times at this point, so it should definitely have some place in the Wikipedia article. This quote does a good job of contextualizing Butler's work and particularly Anyanwu's decision to not commit suicide, which would also be considered a victory going by other feminist novels of the time.

"Octavia Butler's Uncanny Women: Structure and Characters in The Patternist Series", by Briana Whiteside

• Contrast to stereotypical black women as portrayed in other media/culture: Jezebel (whore), Sapphire (angry black woman), mammy (motherly, happy to serve)
• Anyanwu's powers are much stronger than what other black women in sf have - instead of more metaphorical, she is god-like and doesn't have to rely on other people or their powers to fuel her own.
• However, the characters' powers don't allow them to escape concerns like slavery, disease, & death of old age.
• Uncanny women stems partly from the science fiction narrative.
• Butler's work helps blend the categories of "science-fiction" and "African American literature", instead of them being considered mutually exclusive.
• Overall not a very good source. Long, repetitive and not a ton of new info better stated elsewhere.

Quote # 1: "At a time when there were hardly any black women lead characters in sci-fi, the presence and powers of Butler’s uncanny protagonists thus constituted a refreshing anomaly. They are like the spiritual healers that are presented in African American literature, but they can also internally heal themselves and others, which are abilities that other healers do not have."

• This contrast can provide context for Butler's Wild Seed and can go to Reception, or simply a theme about the way black women are presented, or specifically the powers/spirituality.

Quote # 2: " Butler’s texts do not relegate themselves as easily to the realm of the fantastic as we might suspect. The incorporation of realistic affairs in America such as human breeding, incest-rial rape, as well as stealing of identity are not common themes of sci-fi as they are in African American literature."

• This could make an interesting line or section on the Wikipedia article, since Wild Seed is a book where people argue about the genre it falls into.