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Octavia Butler Sparknotes

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Afrofuturism, a genre that is the combination of science fiction, fantasy, and African diasporic culture, has its roots in the work of writers and artists who sought to imagine alternative futures for people of African descent. One of the key figures in the development of Afrofuturism is Sun Ra, a jazz musician and composer who created a mythic persona that merged ancient Egyptian symbols with visions of outer space. Sun Ra’s music and philosophy inspired a generation of artists and thinkers to explore new possibilities for Afrofuturist expression.Another important figure in the Afrofuturist movement is Octavia Butler herself, whose work has been instrumental in shaping the genre and pushing boundaries of what is possible in speculative fiction. Butler’s exploration of themes such as race, gender, and power in …show more content…

It talks about things like race, gender, power, and what might happen to people in the future. This book is part of a series called Xenogenesis, also known as Lilith's Brood. The other books in the series are "Adulthood Rites" and "Imago." In the story, the world is in bad shape after an apocalypse and humans are in danger of dying out. But then some aliens called the Oankali show up to help. They are experts in genetics and want to mix their DNA with humans to create a new kind of species. Afrofuturism is a type of writing that imagines what the future could be like from the perspective of an African perspective. It often includes things like science fiction, magic, and stories that make you think about what could happen. In the book "Dawn," the author, Butler, tells a story about a world where humans are almost gone because of a big war. The main character, Lilith Iyapo, is chosen by aliens called the Oankali to help make society better again. In this story, Butler discusses some really important topics like colonization, being mixed, and what it means to be

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149 Words | 1 Pages

This article first talks about how people were not willing to talk about race, but would eat other ethnic foods, wear their clothes, and even sing songs created by people of different ethnic background. Octavia Butlers’ books and shorts story’s, which is in the science fiction category, boldly talks about race, and how the conversation about it has shifted. However in the parable series, it is said that Butler is not so concerned with the workings of race, as related to her previous works. In the story she does highlight race under late capitalism. Butler wants her audience to see how race would function with the demise of the United States government.

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1444 Words | 6 Pages

By mixing a time travel genre with a historical slave narrative Butler is also able to effectively keep the reader engrossed in her story. The time travel aspect appeals to a wider audience and allows her a gateway of addressing her main point of showing off the many social and technological achievements that humanity has

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396 Words | 2 Pages

Octavia E. Butler characterizes Dana as instinctive to highlight the belief of how dangerous it is in the early 1800s. On her first trip to the past, Dana saves Rufus, a young white boy drowning in a river. After performing artificial respiration, ultimately saving his life, she is held at gunpoint: “I turned, startled, and found myself looking down the barrel of the longest rifle I had ever seen. I heard a metallic click, and I froze, thinking I was going to be shot for saving the boy’s life” (Butler 14). Dana finds herself in a life-threatening situation after her instinctive action of saving a boy from drowning.

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960 Words | 4 Pages

In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, Rufus Weylin is one of the main characters who undergoes a lot of change throughout the novel, making him a round character. A round character is defined as a “major character in a story who encounters contradictory situations and undergoes transformation during this phase. Therefore, the characters does not remain the same throughout the narrative, making their traits difficult to identify from beginning until the end (LiteraryDevice).” The reader, along with Dana, follows Rufus’s growth throughout some major points in his life, from a young boy who forms a bond and friendship with Dana, to when he grows up to be a racist man who ultimately attempts to rape her. However, it is evident that Rufus’s ideology

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808 Words | 4 Pages

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. She lost her father when she was seven years old, and was raised by her grandmother and her mother, who supported the family by working as a maid. As a child, Butler was known for her shyness and her impressive height- she grew to be six feet tall. She was dyslexic, which, along with her height and her shyness, made school a nightmare for her.

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2386 Words | 10 Pages

Literary Analysis Essay William Howard The short story that I chose for my literary analysis essay is “Brownies” By ZZ Packer. This fictional short story had a powerful meaning because it focused on how racial stereotyping can cause a lot of problems even among young girls who were attending a Girl Scouts camp. “Brownies” also showed how stereotyping can actually be harmful and can sometimes lead to hurtful consequences for the person who is the victim of it and for the person is guilty of stereotyping someone. I decided to do my analysis of this short story using the historical context element because of the long history of problems between the Black and White races in this country according to our history books, including

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1119 Words | 5 Pages

There are certain things that set humans apart from other creatures. Intelligence, emotion, and humanity are concepts that many understand while others struggle to grasp. In a time before the Civil War, African Americans were treated with a lack of humanity and respect. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, exposes the racism towards African Americans in the 19th century by showing the interaction of Jim with white Americans.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

By understanding the characters in “Bloodchild”, it can be seen that Butler reversed the roles of

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670 Words | 3 Pages

Dana goes back in time during the slave days where racism was very common, and this piece of evidence shows how rude people of color were treated. Butler draws on that experience to convey the universal theme that racism happened frequently in the past, but it’s still occurring today. Through this novel, Butler speaks to the reader with the message that racism is something that continues, and will keep on continuing for a long time. The words“ job and white” show a negative connotation, and implies that people of color did not have very pleasant lives before. Dana experienced time traveling to the past, which lead to an external conflict of dealing with racism and slavery.

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1300 Words | 6 Pages

It is in this part where it allows the reader to see how Butler uses this text in order to share the concept of the events in your life or that you experience often change you. In the novel we will see Butler use different examples to help shape the idea of how race, class, and power emphasize issues in society now. The elements of race, class, and power have similarities within each other that are showcased in the articles and novel that better the understanding Meaning, the type race in which you identify with somewhat determines which class you are born into, in addition leading to what class you are typically in. We will see the alternative perspectives that are associated with Butler’s ideology on race, class, and power throughout Parable of the Sower.

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237 Words | 1 Pages

The Butler started with the scene of Negro lynching with Martin Luther King’s quotation: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” This quotation alluded Cecil’s attitude of mind toward harsh reality. In 1926, African Americans received subhuman treatment. Adult Cecil had an opportunity to work in the hotel as a butler.

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1426 Words | 6 Pages

What is Love? Obsessive love can be issued as stalking or overwhelming texts to situations as serious as homicidal or suicidal thoughts or actions; however, obsessive love is not love at all as psychotherapist Susan Forward puts it. Yet, on the other hand, many psychologists such as Freud believe that environmental factors cause a neurological disability that makes one convinced that he or she is truly in love with the victim; for example, people who have had rejecting parents or problems with the separation process in their childhoods can lead to this problem. These actions and behaviors are blatant to the character Rufus in Octavia Butler’s Kindred. This researcher will examine how Rufus uses some of these distraught actions and behaviors

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908 Words | 4 Pages

More specifically, gender’s role on women and their positions in the world. Being a young woman, I fall into the intended audience of the book. The rhetoric in the book appeals to the young girls around the same age of the main character

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1390 Words | 6 Pages

Racism during Cullen’s lifetime was incredibly prevalent, and one can without much doubt infer that the kind of racism depicted in “Incident” would be worth far more than the mere sixty-nine words Cullen grants the poem. One may believe this

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671 Words | 3 Pages

The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

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