The book is presented by Denise
Present: Barb, Beth, Denise, Grace, Katharine, Peggy, Wendy
Octavia Butler was born in Pasadena, California in 1947. She was an only child raised by her widowed mother and her maternal grandmother. She was paralysingly shy, so she spent lots of time in the library. She was also somewhat dyslexic and she was the target of school bullies. Butler’s mother gave her a typewriter at age 10 to encourage her writing. Her aunt was skeptical, telling her: “Honey, negroes can’t be writers.” Indeed, Butler was frustrated by the lack of representation of people like her in literature. She loved science fiction but was frustrated that she only encountered white male heroes. She thought she could write a better story with people like her in them.
She participated in a writing program designed to encourage minority writers. There she met Harlan Ellison, who was impressed with her work and pushed her to enroll in a sci-fi workshop. He even gave her some of the money to pay fees. She sold two short stories at workshop. Her mother wanted her to train as a secretary to have a steady job, but Butler chose instead to work at part-time jobs, waking up in the early hours of the morning to write. It was five years before she began to make a living as writer.
Butler never married or had children, instead she lived as a hermit. She died in 2006 of a stroke at age 58. She left all her archives to the Huntington library in Pasadena, and it has become one of the Huntington’s most requested research archives.
Denise made good use of the online resources to prepare for her presentation. She read an interview with one of the researchers working on Butler. One of the questions discussed was how black women writers imagine humanity. Another concerned what exactly did Butler know about genetics. It turns out that Butler made lots of notes about this. We can connect what Dawn says about the Oankali using Lilith’s cancer cells to the historical case of the black woman, Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells are still being used for research.
In her research for Dawn Butler went to Amazonia. There is a picture of her at Machu Picchu. She was interested in the biodiversity of the rain forest. Also her archive has her notes on changes in the climate and the environment. We can link this to the representation of humanity’s destruction of the planet earth in Dawn.
Butler kept diaries from a young age. She was always writing notes to motivate herself. Denise read a few of these, for example: 10 pages a day! Write! She writes about the necessity of learning to speak well, for she had a fear of speaking. She wrote: “I’m a dancing bear, a novelty. … I must become a good storyteller, reach people beyond color . Speak well. Tell a good story.”
She made promises to herself about her writing, for example she noted her goal to be on the bestseller list. She won awards for the best science fiction writing. Her best known book is Kindred, a novel in which a contemporary woman gets taken back to a plantation, which Denise would classify more as fantasy. Peggy asked how fantasy and sci-fi is different. Beth explained that a writer can imagine anything in fantasy. In science fiction, there has to be a scientific structure. She noted that the genre hasn’t really achieved literary status—she couldn’t think of any crossovers into the big literary prizes for fiction like the Booker prize or the National Book Award. Beth also mentioned the novels coming out about AI that are getting more main stream attention. We thought of Ian McEwan (Machines Like Me). And then there’s Orwell’s 1984 and Jules Verne’s prophetic science fiction novels that have become classics. Butler is the recipient of a McArthur Genius grant. Was she self-educated in science? Denise affirmed that she was. She did a tremendous amount of research, as the archives show.
Denise listed some of the themes in Dawn. such as the critique of hierarchies, the alteration of humans, the relationship to Afro-Futurism.
Above all, this novel seems concerned about questions of power and hierarchy. According to the Oankali, humanity has two mismatched tendencies, which are a fatal pair: high intelligence and an older, more entrenched one, which is a hierarchical characteristic. Putting intelligence at the service of hierarchy is a recipe for danger (instead of intelligence guiding hierarchy. Denise said that she struggled with the idea of hierarchy being a problem (as opposed to territorial behaviour). Wendy said that she would pose the problem as dominance. We see it clearly with the tendency for males to want to dominate. Men more aggressive than women. Beth agreed and pointed out that the homophobia of certain characters is an example. They call Joseph a faggot. They object to the way they feel the Oankali “take” them like a woman. But although the Oankali object to hierarchy, isn’t the acceptance of their plans also an acceptance of hierarchy? The survivors are asked to follow Lilith as their leader. Lilith doesn’t trust men (understandably after her experience with Paul), so she wakes up more women than men. We discussed the differences between the genders in human behavior, how masculine culture seeks out a leader to follow, while feminine culture tends to be more collaborative.
After saving Alison from rape Lilith is asked whether she is human because of her strength. She said “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have cared if you got raped.” Is caring for other humans a sign of humanity? Lilith’s strategy is to learn about her captors and run. A group of humans has accepted the situation and cooperating. Peter’s group wants to fight.
This leads to a discussion of the Oankali understanding of humanity. In the novel they make mistakes. They seem not to understand human culture, although Nikanj has more insight, having lived with humans from childhood. The Oankali don’t lie or betray, so they don’t expect humans to do so. The Oankali don’t need language to communicate, having more reliable sensory equipment.
Denise asked us how we felt after reading the first chapter. Katharine felt lost. It wasn’t clear where we were. Even by the end of the novel, there are still humans who don’t believe that they are on a ship in space. Wendy spoke of disorientation. The space ship is unlike anything we know or can even imagine. It seemed that, given that Butler is black, Lilith’s experience could be read as an allegory of the Middle passage. There are parallels with the slavery experience, with humans being used as breeders. Beth said that she was drawn in by the mystery, wanting to resolve the questions that the opening chapter raises.
If we were placed in Lilith’s situation or in a situation where we met a non-threatening alien, how would we react? We discussed human beings’ tendency to mistrust anyone who is different, and difference might be racial, linguistic, biological etc. Is this cultural or innate? Maybe a bit of both. Wendy thought she would be afraid of the Oankali, even though she feels that they are superior to humans and more nurturing of life. Grace thought she would like them. The Oankali are very seductive. They have the power to make people feel good, even to cure them of their ills. Still, the humans feel that they are being attacked, they don’t trust their captors.
In fact, Butler makes the Oankali ambiguous—this is a brilliant writerly touch. Lilith is angry and part of her hates the aliens. They are saving humanity, but also using humanity. Humanity will be helped to continue, but it will also be obliterated in the process, since the new generations will be transformed through interbreeding with the Oankali. Still, this is maybe a good thing, since human beings seem set to destroy each other once again. The survivors have already shown their willingness to use violence. They attach Lilith and kill Joseph. In the second book of the trilogy, the people who resist the Oankali learn to manufacture weapons and begin carrying out raids against other communities. So the book shows human depravity.
Denise showed picture of an Oankali drawn by Butler. It looks somewhat human. We talked about their appearance. They are able to seem somewhat human, but they also have tentacles. They come from a watery planet originally and have features of sea creatures. Wendy thought of them as being like octopuses or squid. Denise said that they have the ability to sting, like jelly fish.
Wendy wondered whether the novel meets the major criterion of science fiction—that the science is credible. Both Beth and Denise (the most expert at sci-fi) felt that it does. Her imagination is based in a knowledge of science and culture. The Oankoli can put genetic information to new uses. The ship is an organism that they have modified to their purposes. Butler is visionary in her imagining of the importance of genetics. The Oankali revere all life and they modify living things that serve them. The ship has a personality; everything on it is organic; everything has DNA. Like other great sci-fi writers, Butler predicts the future. Only now we are we beginning to use genetics as medicine.
We discussed Lilith’s pregnancy at the end of the book. She is angry that she has been impregnated without her consent. It shows that there’s a lack of trust between species. This plot development reminds us of slave or animal exploitation. None of the survivors have families. Nikanj says that new families can be created. Does it seem credible that some of the survivors would accept these new family structures? Someone mentioned that people getting into longterm relationships with chatbots or with their pets. So why not with the Oankali?
Having read the 3 books of the trilogy, Beth explained some of what happened in the sequels before. We ended at noon.
