Dawn

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Omry, Keren, "A Cyborg Performance: Gender and Genre in Octavia Butler". Phoebe: Journal of Gender and Cultural Critiques. 17.2 (2005 Fall): 45–60. Dawn (1987) is the first novel in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy, one of the key works of speculative fiction of the 1980s. Over the course of the trilogy, Butler’s alien invasion story subverts the standard genre expectations to deconstruct ideas around gender and sexuality, colonialism and invasion, and how we relate to the nonhuman. Dawn is a vital tale of alien encounter, one that is interested in humanity’s troubled relationship to the alien Other. Butler expertly weaves a complex tapestry around one woman’s intensely personal encounter with aliens, in which echoes of humanity’s history of colonialism and destruction of indigenous peoples are recontextualised. Butler asks deep and probing questions about the nature of humanity, one which unflinchingly stares into the darkest parts of human history but still manages to return with hope for the future. Thus, without a true choice as to whether or not to breed with the Oankali, this kind of coercion can be defined as rape. For female humans in the novel, the threat of rape does not solely come from their Oankali captors. Literary analyst Meghan K. Riley writes: "rape is central, and apparently acceptable, in Dawn." Both men and women have to worry about being forced to submit to Oankali sexuality. Joseph, Lilith's lover, is actually induced to perform sexual activities with Nikanj without having verbally consented while they are all in the training room. However, human women also have to worry about the threat of rape at the hands of the human men. Lilith has to fight off Paul Titus who attempts to rape her after she turns down his sexual advances. Later, Leah is almost raped in the training room by her partner: "Leah's charge, a small blond man, grabbed her, hung on, and might have raped her if he had been bigger or she smaller" (171). In an environment where humanity has been denied consent at the hands of their extremely powerful alien captors, the human men lash out against human women, who are doubly under threat.

Ira Flatow, " The Interplay of Science and Science Fiction", NPR: Talk of the Nation, June 18, 2004. [Panel discussion; audio]. In 1983, Butler published "Speech Sounds", a story set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where a pandemic has caused most humans to lose their ability to read, speak, or write. For many, this impairment is accompanied by uncontrollable feelings of jealousy, resentment, and rage. "Speech Sounds" received the 1984 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. [23] Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" [76] Bradford, K. Tempest (July 10, 2014). "An 'Unexpected' Treat For Octavia E. Butler Fans". NPR . Retrieved October 15, 2021. As Lilith reads the dossiers, we learn that she has been given new abilities by the Oankali: along with being able to open walls, she can now create new walls at will. They have also given her information, increased her physical strength, improved her memory, and given her the ability to control the plants that house the sleeping humans. We also learn that Nikanj's mates, Ahajas and Dichaan, have been worried about her safety. They taught her how to move around walls so that she can enclose herself safely in a cubicle. They seem to be just as worried as Lilith that things will go wrong with the Awakened humans. Lilith resolves herself to Awaken people who seem least likely to do her harm. She makes modifications to the room she is in, building separate rooms meant for different purposes. Lilith sets to work Awakening Tate. This takes her longer than it would take the Oankali and requires intense concentration. Eventually, the plant housing Tate is released from the wall and Lilith releases her sleeping body. Lilith is trying to dress Tate when she Awakens, but Tate immediately yells at Lilith to get away from her. Tate comes to her senses slowly, realizing that her previous memories of solitary confinement aboard the ship were not a dream. She watches silently as Lilith sends the plant that was holding Tate away and closes the wall. Lilith tells Tate that she is also a prisoner, but Tate replies that she's "'more like a trustee'" (128). Lilith then tells Tate that she chose to Awaken her first because she seemed the least likely to try and kill her and most likely to help Lilith with the rest of the Awakenings. Lilith tells Tate that they are aboard an alien ship and that she has been asleep for over 250 years.Zaki, Hoda M. "Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler". Science-Fiction Studies 17.2 (1990): 239–251. JSTOR 4239994. Lilith acclimates to living among the Oankali in the second half of "Family." She begins to understand the Oankali way of life and, though she is still an outsider, begins to move with more ease through their world. The largest development that helps Lilith with this process is the procedure that Nikanj performed on her at the end of the previous section. When Lilith awakes, at first she does not realize that anything is different. However, she suddenly realizes that there is no longer a language barrier between her and Nikanj: "It dawned on her slowly that Nikanj had come to her speaking Oankali and she had responded in kind—had responded without really thinking. The language seemed natural to her, as easy to understand as English" (79). Lilith realizes that Nikanj's procedure has improved her memory to such an extent that "now she remembered every day that she had been awake" (82). Later, Lilith will also be given the ability to open walls in her own home when Nikanj alters her body chemistry a bit more. Every single one of these procedures is done without her explicit consent—even though she does agree to the memory procedure, she does not know exactly what it will do to her. The Oankali seem to believe that they are free to make any changes they deem "for the greater good" no matter what the being they are operating on thinks or feels about it. Davis, Marcia (February 28, 2006). "Octavia Butler, A Lonely, Bright Star Of the Sci-Fi Universe". The Washington Post' .

The Pasadena City College Foundation". pasadena.edu. Pasadena City College. 2019. Archived from the original on July 8, 2019 . Retrieved April 5, 2019. Birth of a Writer", Essence 20 (May 1989): 74+. Reprinted as "Positive Obsession" in Bloodchild and Other Stories A school which Butler had previously attended for middle school changed its name from Washington STEAM Multilingual Academy to Octavia E. Butler Magnet. [91]

Nittle, Nadra (November 4, 2022). "Octavia Butler's middle school has been renamed in her honor". The 19th. 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 ] Scott Simon, " Essay on Racism: A Science-Fiction Writer Shares Her View of Intolerance", Weekend Edition Saturday. September 1, 2001 [Audio]. Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction", Media in Transition (MIT February 19, 1998; Transcript October 4, 1998)

Geyh, Paula, Fred G. Leebron and Andrew Levy. "Octavia Butler". Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998: 554–555. Ignyte Award for Best Comics Team for a graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings Lilith's initial discomfort at realizing that her captors, who turn out to be an alien race called the Oankali, have performed surgery on her body without her consent speaks to an overarching theme of Dawn. Throughout Dawn, the humans aboard the Oankali ship are forced to submit to their captors' desires. The question of consent seems to be relatively straightforward: because the humans are captive, they have no choice but to submit to the Oankali's decisions. In other words, the humans have no consent, and therefore no bodily autonomy, in the Oankali world. In "Womb," Lilith realizes this truth when she learns the Oankali have changed her genetic code and begins to see the way the Oankali treat humans as similar to the way humans used to treat animals on Earth: "This was one more thing they had done to her body without her consent and supposedly for her own good. 'We used to treat animals that way,' she muttered bitterly" (31). Butler, Octavia E. "Afterword to Crossover." Bloodchild and Other Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press. 1996. p.120. Baccolini, Raffaella. "Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler", in Marleen S. Barr (ed.), Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000: 13–34.Butler followed Clay's Ark with the critically acclaimed short story "Bloodchild" (1984). Set on an alien planet, it depicts the complex relationship between human refugees and the insect-like aliens who keep them in a preserve to protect them, but also to use them as hosts for breeding their young. Sometimes called Butler's "pregnant man story", "Bloodchild" won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award. [23] Johns, J. Adam. "Becoming Medusa: Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood and Sociobiology." Science Fiction Studies 37.3 (2010): 382–400. And in the end, the Oankali are offering not just survival for humanity, but a way for humanity to evolve beyond the selfish, destructive tendencies that led it to almost wipe itself out. The Oankali are a fascinating alien creation. Covered in tentacles like a large sea slug, the appearance of the Oankali is so off-putting to humans that Lilith must spend much time overcoming her visceral reaction of fear and disgust at them. The three gender system of male, female and ooloi allows Butler to subvert ideas around binary gender and the nuclear family in profound and fascinating ways. And the Oankali exist in a much less destructive way than humans do – they have an intimate relationship with the world around them, absorbing and learning from other life forms, and they have sex by linking directly into each other’s neural networks. As such their behaviour is driven more by empathy and sympathy than what the Oankali call the Human contradiction – our intelligence subservient to our hierarchical instincts. The Oankali offer novel posthuman ways of being that will be realised in Obviously, to everybody other than the Oankali, this stance is inherently problematic. Lilith is forced to carry a child which she did not consent to. Every human aboard the ship is forced to submit to ooloi sexual advances whether or not they consent. The Oankali's fantasy that they are offering their captives a choice is merely that—a fantasy. They are not as benevolent as they seem to think. Allison, Dorothy (December 19, 1989). "The Future of Female: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode". The Village Voice. p.67.