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Chapters 1-6 Summary
In the beginning of Octavia Butler's "Fledging" we are introduced to a young woman who wakes up somewhere unfamiliar starving and in pain. We do not know how she got there or where the pain was from only that she compared it to having being burnt. The only thing that she knew was that she needed fresh meat and that is what she got. She killed her next meal and ate its raw meat. It started to rain and she decided after a couple of nights that she would wander of in search of finding any clues that would tell her what happened to her, who she was and where she was.

As she wandered off into the road a blue car pulled up alongside her and there was a man named Wright inside who stopped for her. The man out of concern for her and the blood he had seen on her shirt offered to take her to the hospital or the police station. The girl refused. The man agreed he would take her home with him, and he even gave her a new name Renee which meant reborn. Renee bit into the Wrights neck and he loved it, and that's when he realized the stranger he had picked up was a vampire. He took her to his home even though he knew he could get in trouble if anyone caught her there with him. To Wright she looked like a baby merely 10 or 11 years of age, but it was something about how she spoke and the words she used that made him change his mind. He took her to his cabin and it was there that they explored each others bodies and they had sex.

Wright told her that it would be fine to stay there as long as she went out at night. So after they had sex and he was sound asleep Renee went off in the night in search of more victims. She knew she couldn't just live off his blood, it would make him weak so she needed more sources of "food". She found a woman in which it was easy for her to seduce and then four more victims. She knew she had them all under her spell leaving them in some sort of trance that made them all yearn for her to come back and bite.

CHAPTERS 16-21
In these chapters Shori see's an attack about to take place on her community in the early morning and she is the only one up at the time. She see's a group of men in cars coming into the community. She realizes that her community was about to be under attack and sent to wake the others. She woke up the symbiants and made sure they wrapped their Ina in blankets and they grabbed guns and to only shoot if they saw cans and smelled gasoline. With the others awoken Shori and the rest of them were able to fight off the attackers killing fifteen of the eighteen that were sent to do the attack. Henry's and Wayne s houses were unfortunately burnt down. Shori ends up capturing one of the attackers named Victor which she kept alive and bit into him in order to gain his control and to find information out from him about the attack. He then explained to her who was responsible for sending the attacks and how he was sent there to attack her and the others. He said he was in L.A. were he lives when he was approached by a man that pulled him into an alley and bit into him. Victor admits that he had did other jobs and attacks on other Ina's. Victor admits that the man that sent her to do the attacks was named Silk. Shori presented the captured Victor to the Gordon's at Daniels house the next day after he had rested. Shori found out that these same people that sent the attackers could have been responsible for the attack on her family in the beginning. The Ina's decided to call a Council of Judgement in which 7 families had to agree to come and represent in the meeting. Shori also realizes she can read and speak Ina. Shori also bites the other two men they captured from the attack and questioned them as well, they had similar stories to what Victor had explained. They were regular men living their lives when they were bitten and asked to carry out these attacks. The Council of Judgement was set to be 10 nights from then in which the other families would come to Shori's community and they would be heard.

CHAPTERS 22-EPILOGUE
In these chapters the families arrive to have the Council of Judgement. Shori was now putting faces to the names she had heard before. Preston introduced all the families as well as introducing Shori. Shori then took the mic and told her story from everything she could remember from waking up in the cave until the point they had reached now. Milo Silk was representing the other side of the council and he began to ask questions that Shori found insulting. He wanted her to be examined by a physician as though to implicate that there was something wrong with Shor. He tried to use her prior injuries against her saying maybe she did not heal all the way and how can she be fit for council and can not remember anything or the people there that she had once loved so much. Shori quickly stood up for herself letting Milo know that she was in fact an Ina and had recovered from her injuries. Milo compared her to a clever dog and Shori was asked not to retreat against him because it wouldn't be best in her favor to do so at the time. If Shori continued to show her teeth she would go from being the victim to being the opponent that they would see as dangerous and they would have her killed. Another member of the Silk family took representation and denied any involvement on the attacks on Shori's family and the previous weeks attacks. The next morning Shori got terrible news from Martin once she realized that Theodora was missing, she also was told that Theodora was dead. Someone had killed her. Shori went outside to where Theodora's body was laying and took in all the scents that she smelled. There were so many scents on her body but Shori was certain of a few. They told Shori not to kill anybody and she promised

RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT 4
QUESTION 1. The first strategy Butler uses is deracination. The fact that Shori was a modified vampire allowed her to relate a lot more to humans. Shori uses the human side of her to be able to walk during the day tolerating the sunlight which made for less damage done during the attack on her community. She also has an emotional attachment to humans. QUESTION 2. The second strategy Butler uses is their history. She points out how vampires and humans may have lived together before and that is why they can coexist with one another in the story. The Inas and humans may have experienced a lot of the same stages in life. QUESTION 3. The third strategy Butler uses is race. Shori was dark skinned while all her other Ina's were white. Shori wasn't viewed by other Inas as a vampire which made it ironic to make her the strongest to survive. QUESTION 4. According to Nayar accepting the bond with a vampire a humans choice to become post human because it is up to the human to continue living his or her life or to live with the vampire. QUESTION 5. The way species can relate to each other is by their responses and their respect. By humans becoming their companions it keeps the other species alive and growing. This can be an adaptation and creation of other human races and different forms of Inas.

FLEDGING REVIEW
In Sandra Govan's review of Butlers Fledging she states why Butler's story is a good one and keeps the readers wanting more and keeps them on their toes. She depicts how the modern vampire stories show vampires to be ones that can not stand the light of day and usually when they bite into someone they then in turn turn that person into a vampire as well. This isn't true as for Shori being genetically made with African American DNA she is different. Govan focus on how different Shori is from the regular vampires we read about that stay in a wooden box all day and come out at night and wear their capes. She points out how different Shori is in the story even when it comes to her family ties with her symbionts. It shows that even though she didn't remember her father she showed him no love but in turn showed a lot of love to her Ina family and her symbionts. Govan just points out how relatively distinct Fledging is in this vampire tale that involves love, relationships, power, sacrifice and many other themes that we can relate to as humans in everyday life.

"Defining her, identifying her kind, who they are and what they do, is part of the novel's ability to hold our attention" "Where Butlers Fledging differs from the norm in vampire lore is that it does not depend upon the horror, the supernatural, or the gothic for effect". "Butler goes her own way, creating as she customarily does, an entirely credible community with individuals motivated by some of those universal human attributes that drive us all- love, hate, fear, family, hunger, pride, and prejudice".

1. The Revision of the vampire figure 2. Racisim/Speciecism 3.alternative sexual relations/sexuality/family relations

My Impression Of Octavia Butler
After reading the annotate of Butlers "Positive Obsession" as well as the biographical information on Octavia Butler I learned many things about this African American science fiction author. She grew up in a world where blacks weren't very important especially black women, but she herself became very important. Her mother would bring home tons of books when she was a child, some of them being too advanced for her age, but she grew into them as the years passed. She grew a found interest to write stories. Being raised by her grandmother and her mother without her father and without her four other siblings whom had passed away. Her mother pushed for her to read the bible and it was in that Octavia found an interest in the torture, betrayal, conflict, and murder that the Bible portrays. Octavia later went on to be a writer making most of her stories based around science fiction. She had dyslexia which made it difficult for her to read and operate a motor vehicle. Octavia had no confidence in herself at times thinking that she could not be a science fiction writer especially as a woman and a black woman, but she never gave up on herself. She traveled the world studying and writing novels. She sold her first novels later on in life in 1969 and is now looked upon as one of the most renowned science fiction authors in the world.

JOURNAL ENTRY #1
Today in class I learned what wikipedia really was. For years I have heard the word wikipedia being used as a computer database online but have never went onto the website itself until todays class. I learned how to create a wikipedia account, learned how to use wikipedia as a source. I also learned how to insert citations and insert them onto my sandbox page. I also refreshed my memory on how to use the LaGuardia College library database to search for articles and books. I learned how to enroll in my class on wikipedia. I learned that anything that you write on wikipedia will never be deleted as the same with many things you search or write on the internet.

JOURNAL ENTRY #4
Today in class we broke up into teams to edit Octavia Butlers works. Even though the teacher gave my team the hardest assignment we were able to work in sub teams and get everything accomplished. At first no one in my team understood the assignment but once it was explained to us we found our own way to get the work done. If that isnt team work i dont know what is.

JOURNAL ENTTRY #6
Today in class we broke up into teams and reviewed together teams work. We had to edit what needed to be edited. being no one from my team was in class I was diverted into making sure my summaries were worked on and my homework assignments were completed. I was also able to print out the reading I need for research assignment #4 and was able to start working on that.

JOURNAL ENTRY #7
Today in class we broke up into groups and did a paraphrasing activity. My partner and I had to paraphrase two different quotes as many times as we could under a time frame. I found this activity fun and mind exercising especially the fact we had to come up with as many we could in a timely manner. My partner and i came up with 5-6 paraphrases for each quote. After that excercise being that i finished my research assignment#4 i broke up into another group to complete research assignment #5 part 1. My team completed this assignment in record breaking time and then i took a break to go eat pizza. After the break we broke up into our initially groups to work on our Butler biography.

JOURNAL ENTRY #9
Today in class we had a discussion with Dr. Joy Sanchez-Taylor about the important themes of Fledging. I found this discussion interesting because I learned and got to hear different view points and analyzations of the book. After that we broke up into teams and had to create a topic sentence for the theme we would be working on. My groups theme was racism/speciecism/supremacism. I think that my team came up with two good topic sentences that were straight to the point. After the break we broke up into groups to create paragraphs for themes of the book. I was lucky enough to choose the group that I wanted to be in and ended up with the same theme I had previously written the topic sentence for. I kind of got writers block writing my paragraph how annoying.

JOURNAL ENTRY #10
Even though i was late for class today i managed to come in and get straight to work and finished everything that was assigned. I was assigned to edit the "backgrounds" section. I was able to find the citations and sources that had to be added. I was also able to paraphrase, edit and delete the things that i felt weren't needed and the things that needed to be changed. I revised the whole background section and then printed it out to let one of my classmates read it over and decide if there was anything more that needed to be edited. To my surprise they found nothing that was wrong and found it to be good. I posted it to team 3's sandbox and now im writing my journal entry.

CITATION PRACTICE
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Birth Of A Writer