Lilith's Brood

For this week, I read from Lilith's Brood, or more specifically Dawn, by Octavia Butler. This author and her books opened a lot of doors to interesting discussions today in class. The book explored some concepts that were not so mainstream and pretty far from comfortable, such as the idea of cross species gestation. One concept that I found to be very innovative were the Ooloi, or the author's creation of an entirely new gender. This opened a lot of doors into discussions of our own gender norm and how we treat gender in our society. In this way specifically, the book dealt with something that was not a part of majoritarian acceptance and culture (though it should be.) I think the story itself was simply astounding in terms of creativity and originality. The concept felt very grounded and the conflicts and tensions were real to the reader.
This book, as well as her short story Bloodchild that we read in class had similar themes and subject matter, though they were described in entirely different ways from one another. Being a lover of longer stories, I felt that Dawn held together a lot more for me. Above all what I got out of this week was the idea that alien invasion stories and the idea of diverse science fiction can have many more origins than I originally thought. Dawn was one of the more original concepts that I have read in this genre, and it provided a good sense of hope for the books to come that I will most certainly read.