Black History Month Series: Octavia’s Brood

I love Octavia Butler. It’s not a secret. I’ve talked about her writing before at the beginning of this series and when I reviewed her series Lilith’s Brood AKA Xenogenesis. I’ve also recommend her incredible Earthseed series more than any other book, plus I’ve read her seminal book Kindred and her vampire novel Fledgling. Her version of science fiction that is so rooted in her political beliefs and her experience of race is truly amazing and I can’t recommend it enough. Unsurprisingly, Octavia Butler has a lot of fans. In 2015, her work inspired a book of short stories from social justice movements titled Octavia’s Brood. I’ve been eyeing it in my local independent bookstore since it came out and finally read it.

Octavia’s Brood is a testament to a writer who wrote so movingly about the victims of prejudice and about the need for society to grow, change, and accept differences in order to survive. The editors Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha call the stories in the book “visionary fiction.” In creating the book they invited leaders and thinkers in social justice movements to engage in visionary thinking and to write about the futures they imagine. The results are fascinating.

There are stories full of inspiration about how listening to our past, learning from our mistakes, and letting those we’ve oppressed lead brings us to a beautiful future. And there are dark warnings about the places we will find ourselves if we let oppression continue. The types of stories in the book run the gamut from zombie to superheroes to dispatches from the future. There are angels and keepers of memory. There are monsters both human and not. There’s a story about a planet where the physically disabled have been banished and created their own haven, and about how a city fights back against gentrification. The issues covered in the book go beyond the expected racism and sexism, and into ableism, homophobia, ageism, and more. I won’t go on, but it’s a fascinating and imaginative collection.

The format of the stories is also a variety. Most are your traditional short story. A few are excerpts from published novels and a few feel like the start for a novel I’d like to read. The collection includes a couple of essays as well as one story that’s really a script. Whatever type of story you like, there’s something here for you.

Like most short story collections, I loved some of the stories and some weren’t for me. Some I found powerful and exciting, and some I didn’t really get. That goes with the territory, but what’s exciting about Octavia’s Brood is all the new terrain. Whether you love the stories or not, it’s powerful to see the futures imagined by those who work to make ours better.

Black History Month Series: March

While much of my Black History Month reading has been future-focused, this week I did take time to finally read John Lewis’s incredible March saga. March is a three volume graphic novel that follows Lewis’s experiences growing up in the rural south, joining the Civil Rights movement, and working from that time until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

It’s hard to overstate just how special and necessary a thing John Lewis and his collaborators Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell have created in March. Instead of a doorstop of a political biography, Lewis has given us his memoirs in a form that’s accessible to all and deeply moving. In a world where the public discourse about the Civil Rights movement has become so sanitized, Lewis portrays the complex machinery, violent resistance, and often discouraging work of the movement. He also gives a first-hand account of the decisions and dozens of people behind the major events of the Civil Rights era that we’ve all heard of.

That’s one of the things I valued most about the book. March gives credit where credit is due. This is not just the story of one man, but of thousands of volunteers and ordinary citizens who risked their lives for freedom they believed in. John Lewis teaches us about the accomplishments, courage, and contributions of Bob Moses, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and Jim Bevel among many others. He also recognizes a story you almost never hear: that of the women who helped lead the Civil Rights Movement. Beyond Rosa Parks, most average Americans probably only think of men like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, and Lewis himself. But Lewis introduces us to his friend Diane Nash who helped plan protests and develop strategies that lead to important events like the movement in Selma. He also recognizes Fannie Lou Hamer, whose moving testimony of the police brutality she suffered while trying to vote made headlines at the Democratic National Convention of 1964. It was wonderful to see the efforts of these women and others recognized as equally valuable as those of the men we’ve heard of.

March was wonderfully educational, and not just in naming names. The book gives us a look at not just the public face of the movement, but the back room negotiating that it took to pull together hundreds of diverse viewpoints into an effective movement. John Lewis has created here not just a history, but an important example for anyone involved in organizing for social justice. As we become more polarized and get more caught up in testing each other for purity and agreement on every issue, Lewis shows us the ways that people who didn’t always agree had to work together. He shows moments where he the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) were disappointed in leaders like King or the Kennedys and more established organizations like the NAACP. He walks us though trying to empathize with their viewpoint. And he shows us when he was able to compromise and when he held his ground. It’s a valuable lesson today and always.

But most importantly, March is deeply moving. John Lewis reminds us over and over again of the incredible price that was paid for progress. The books portray the personal violence and humiliation that Lewis and other protestors faced. But more importantly, is portrays the bombing of the homes of organizers, of churches, and of the Freedom Rider’s busses. It portrays the murder of young men and women who fought for freedom, or who made the mistake of being in the wrong church at the wrong time. It portrays the true ugliness of the racism black people were fighting against. And it gives an intimate look at the courage it took to stand up and demand better.

The bottom line is: read it. Read it to educate yourself. Read it with your friends or your book club. Read it with your children. Read it to learn, to pay homage, to be inspired, and to be a better person.

Black History Month Series: Zone One

If you follow books, or any of the major literary awards, or have walked into a book store in the last year, you’ve probably heard of Colson Whitehead’s much lauded novel The Underground Railroad.

 

We’re not talking about that. Instead, we’re talking about his zombie book, Zone One. Zone One takes place in Manhattan after a virus that creates zombies has ravaged the world. The book follows a man ironically called Mark Spitz by his comrades as he and his team work towards rebuilding a section of Manhattan by clearing out zombie stragglers. The book takes place over three days, but takes us on flashbacks through Mark Spitz’s life leading up to the plague and his survival from Last Night until now.

On one level, the book has a fairly straightforward zombie narrative. We see the infection and the moment the protagonist found out about the plague. We see the narrative of survival. We see how humanity tries to rebuild itself from the ashes. But Colson Whitehead didn’t get his reputation as a major literary light for writing stuff anyone else could write. The book is serious stuff. You can tell, because like all literary writers who do a take on one of the big monsters, Whitehead calls them something else. In this case it’s skels, short for skeletons.

Zone One takes the framework of a zombie story and uses it to meditate on the violence in our society. Whitehead draws parallels between the attacks of the undead and the spiritual attacks of living in a city like New York. He invents a type of zombie frozen in place and considers what would make a person choose the one place and action they would embody forever. He asks questions about what kind of society we are and what rebuilding would look like. His version is well marketed and full of corporate sponsors, making it one of the most cynical but realistic versions I’ve seen.

The book is also really interesting in that it’s protagonist isn’t a chosen one, isn’t our last hope, isn’t really special at all. Mark Spitz is described as being only notable for being perfectly mediocre. His perspective isn’t one of hope and possibility. He doesn’t have the big picture on how humanity will be saved. He just has the ground level view of someone who has managed to survive and hopes to keep doing so.

The book asks a lot of questions but doesn’t answer many of them. In fact, many of them can’t be answered. I had a hard time getting into the book, but zombies aren’t really my genre. I was certainly touched by and interested in the bigger things Whitehead was trying to say. The book also lead to a really interesting conversation with my boyfriend about what optimism or pessimism in a context like this tells us about the author, and how that perspective is colored by race. In a world where violence against people of color is rampant and progress feels slow or sometimes impossible, playing with metaphors that tackle those questions in a new light is especially powerful. Whether you’re in it for the zombie action or the bigger questions (or hopefully both), Zone One is certainly worth picking up.

Black History Month Series: Welcome

Hello cyberspace!

It’s been a long time, but I’m back with a series on Black History Month. We’ll be looking at, of course, black history. But I’m also interested into looking forward. Let’s talk about black futures, black fantasies, and black science fiction. I’ll be writing at least a review a week and hoping to hit a few authors and books off the beaten path. To get us stared, here’s a couple of recommendations from my last year of reading:

• N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy

If you’ve been hearing about these books everywhere, good. If this is your first time, welcome. The Broken Earth is an amazing fantasy trilogy consisting of The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky. Frankly, any discussion of the series will spoil the fun of figuring out the world as you go, so I recommend stopping this and reading now. But if you need more than that, read on.

The Fifth Season takes place in a place called The Stillness which is prone to massive geological disasters called Fifth Seasons which can span from a few years to generations. The entire culture of the Stillness is built around survival during Fifth Seasons. That includes their treatment of orogenes, people with the magical ability to influence and manipulate the earth. Orogenes are feared, ostracized, and virtually enslaved by a system used to control them and use their powers to keep those who persecute them safe. The story starts following three women: Damaya, Seinite, and Essun through this world and a Season that might change it all.

The series is masterful fantasy with compelling characters, relationships you want to root for, a world that’s a joy to learn about and explore, and narrative twists that are among the best I’ve ever read. It’s also an important exploration of prejudice, persecution, and how a civilization will build itself on the backs of those who are different from them. It’s a must read for fans of fantasy, strong women of color, well-executed social commentary, and great writing.

• Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler is one of the masters of science fiction. She’s known for strong women of color as protagonists, and for writing deft social commentary and part of excellent science fiction.

Possibly her best known work is Kindred, which follows a smart, independent black woman married to a white man in the then-modern era of the 1980s as she is repeatedly transported back in time to the South in the time of slavery. The book is a harrowing look at the brutality of slavery and the effect it has on the mind and soul, as well as the relationships between black women and white men.

I highly recommend her series Lilith’s Brood, which was previously known as Xenogenesis. In the books Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, Bulter explores an alien species called the Oankali which adopts dying species into their lives and culture. The titular Lilith is a black woman who has been awoken in this culture and has to explore it, learn about it, and ultimately figure out how she will become a part of it. Finally, I’d recommend the Earthseed duo: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. These two books follow protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina through an apocalyptic world as she struggles to survive and eventually goes on to found a new faith, Earthseed. It was my first exposure to Butler’s incredible worlds and still the one I’m usually first to recommend.

I hope you’ll get started with these suggestions and join me for exploring more this month!

Required Reading: Lilith’s Brood

Despite evidence here and here to the contrary, this isn’t just a blog where I watch 80s movies and write about it. On top of slowly catching up on the great movies of science fiction and fantasy, I also plan to read the great books. I really can’t think of a place I’d rather start that mission than with the late, great Octavia Butler.

For those not in the know, Octavia Butler is one of the undeniably bad-ass mothers of science fiction. If you ask most people to list women of color writing science fiction, she’s at the top of the list. Hell, for a lot of people she probably is the list. She was a MacArthur Fellow, a protégé of Harlan Ellison, and one of the shamefully few women in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Personally I love her because her work brings a humanity to science fiction that I find annoyingly rare. Her Xenogenesis Trilogy has also been collected in a single volume called Lilith’s Brood. It’s composed of three novels: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, which were published from 1987-1989. The trilogy begins after a war that has destroyed most of humanity. What remains of the human race have been rescued by an alien species called the Oankali. The series follows the Oankali and the humans as they merge to create the beginnings of a brand new species.

Each book follows a different character. First is Lilith, the human who helps bring the two races together for the first time and bears the first construct child. Next is her son Akin who lives for a time among humans who resist the merging of the two species. After the male and female perspective, we get the perspective of the third Oankali sex – ooli. Jodahs is the first ooli of mixed background, and it leads the two species forward into their shared futures. Each story is very different. Dawn is a discovery process. Lilith and the readers alike discover what has become of humanity and what its future holds. Adulthood Rites is really a coming of age story. It follows a boy as he finds his mission and fights to make his dream a reality. Imago feels like a love story as the two species finally begin to understand each other and find a way to start a new life together.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this giant premise could be played for shock, horror, or titillation. But Ms. Butler is so much better than that. In the wrong hands aliens can be cheesy and silly. In the right hands, an outside perspective can allow us to examine what about humanity would appear strange and alien to a new people. The Oankali are a species of highly intelligent, highly adaptable travelers with a heightened awareness of genetic structure. Life is sacred to them. They are fascinated by many of the things that make humanity so destructive: cancer, aggression, and what they term the “Human Contradiction” – the pairing of very high intelligence with devotion to hierarchical structures. The chance to consider what makes humanity both beautiful and terrifying from an outside perspective is rare and captivating.

What’s on show in Lilith’s Brood is Octavia Butler’s deep compassion and ability to craft compelling characters of any background. Only one of our three protagonists is human or from a background we can even begin to imagine. Yet all of them feel complete, complex, fascinating, and dare I say human. That’s the heart of this book. Humanity. Violent, generous, brilliant, vengeful, impulsive, seductive humanity.