User:Jp writer347/sandbox

"Bloodchild: A love Story"
This source is a review and exploration about how the concept of love is found through the story. It is a blogspot from Sunny which readers have the chance to identify certain themes that a story has. This review starts of by stating that she disagrees with the idea that T'Gatoi should be seen as an awful creature from the inside and outside rather than a character who has the a special link with a Terran family. Overall this review has some key points in which helps me to understand more the different relationships that Gan undergoes through the story. It also allows me to question my feelings towards the main character T'Gatoi of whether he is really bad.

Quotes

 * "I both agree and disagree. While I agree that the initial character description of T’Gatoi may be at first a tad bit revolting, I disagree with the argument that she should be seen as as an awful creature without morality who instead merely exudes both an internal and external ugliness."
 * "But like the speaker in Conversations with Octavia Butler, within the MIT Cultural Studies Project section, they characterize Butler’s work much like I myself would when stating that it is, “powerful fiction that grapples with complexities” (157)."
 * "I think that in painting T’Gatoi in such a light, it deprives her of her multi-dimensional complexity as a character, instead rendering her a one-dimensional-type-being, which I do not believe was Butler’s illustrative intent."

"Bloodchild- Short Stories for Students"
Like the previous articles, this article also starts of with an introduction to the story. More like a quick summary and the introduction of ht characters in the story. The article also talks a little bit about Octavia Butlers bibliography and the many awards she has won through her distinguished career. The article also talks about the idea in which love can be found in this story. Something that is hard to do since the story has a feeling of being a slave story. It also puts into question the idea of sex roles, self sacrifice, and the interdependence between different species. This is mainly what the article talks about and the points it focuses on.

Quotes

 * "Butler has described “Bloodchild” as a story about male pregnancy. Set on a foreign planet inhabited by giant, powerful, and intelligent insect-like beings."
 * "He witnesses the violent “delivery” of alien grubs from the abdomen of another man and is forced to question the relationship he has long taken for granted with the species whose planet he shares."
 * "In the disconcerting world of “Bloodchild,” Butler raises provocative questions about sex roles, self sacrifice, and the interdependence between different species."

"Mama's Baby, Papa's Slavery?: The Problem and Promise of Mothering in Octavia E. Butlers's "Bloodchild"
This article os a brief description of the story "Bloodchild". After the description and quick summary is giving, the article mainly questions the fact that Octavia Butler says this story is a love story and not a story of racism. She says that by making the male protagonist in her story Gan pregnant, it would make a perfect act of love that Gan is willingly choosing to be pregnant and have T'Gatois kids. This is what this small scholarly article talks about.

Quotes

 * "While Butler repeatedly rejects readings that situate “Bloodchild” as a “story of slavery,” she contextualizes gender and sex roles in “Bloodchild” in terms of hierarchical power structures that correspond with those in existence during slavery and colonial periods"
 * "Positioning Butler’s male protagonist as an inheritor of this specifically maternal authority gives prominence to Butler’s doctrine of motherly love that, unlike Spillers’s theory, positions the father as an equal progenitor of maternal power and advances the larger scholarly project of placing psychoanalytic philosophies of psychosexual development in dialogue with critical race and postcolonial theories."
 * "Butler writes in her afterword to “Bloodchild” that she “wanted to see whether [she] could write a dramatic story of a man becoming pregnant as an act of love—choosing pregnancy in spite of as well as because of surrounding difficulties”

"'Would You Really Rather Die than Bear My Young?': The Construction of Gender, Race, and Species in Octavia E. Butler's 'Bloodchild'."
This article focuses on the relationship between Gan and Tgatoi. What this article explores are the idea of a human being in love with an alien. It explores how two complete different species try to share a bond in the story. The love Gan has for T'Gatoi slowly starts to disappear ones he starts to grow repulsion towards her when she is helping the man give birth. The article also states how this story is made to have some type of Feminine power since they stronger than the males and it is one of the reasons that males are the ones that get impregnated in the story.

Quotes

 * “Their serpent-like quality evokes fears of the dangerous animal real; the mention of the moon and blood in reference to this female character may allude to a mythic “feminine” power"
 * “Gan, the human boy raised from birth to carry T’Gatois’s eggs, who must face both his love for this maternal figure and his growing repulsion from her as a controlling alien being"
 * “The inner space of Butler’s fiction, is filled with characters who highlight metaphoric considerations of gender, race and species."

Summary
This short story starts of with the introduction of a female. Her name is Noah and she was abducted by the Aliens when she was just eleven years old. She describes to be in a stranger-Community. She was in a dimly lit food production hall of Translator Noah Cannon's employer. She is offered a job by the aliens to be a translator, but she is warned that the job s going to be unpleasant due to how the aliens treat humans. The job she has is to be the translator for the aliens. Through this job she met other humans that hated working for the Aliens and hated them. Apparently now the world's economy is in a deep depression. The story mainly focuses on the reasons she had, for working with the aliens that mistreated not only her but all of the humans that were abducted. After the struggle she faced by working with the Aliens, they ended up releasing her.

Quotes

 * “Her employer had warned her that the job that would be offered to her would be unpleasant not only because of the usual hostility of the human beings she would face, but because the subcontractor for whom she would be working would be difficult.”
 * “They did, yes. The people of the first wave suffered the most. the Communities didn’t know anything about us. They killed some of us with experiments and dietary deficiency diseases and the poisoned others."
 * “No sex,” Noah agreed. “And we are the drugs. The Communities feel better when they enfold us. We feel better too. I guess that’s only fair. The ones among them who are having trouble adjusting to this world are calmed and much improved if they can enfold one of us now and then."

Summary
The story starts of by introducing Martha., an African American writer. She is confused because she doesn't know if she is dead or in a coma or simply dreaming when she encounters God. God gives Martha a task to help mankind stop their destructive ways. While doing that, God tells Martha that she needs to keep in mind three biblical characters which are Jonah, Job, and Noah. God said she will be guided by their stories. God also stated that she will go back to humanity after her task is done but she will go back to humanity to the lowest class, race, and skin color. God gives her the ability to make one change in human kind, but any change she makes will have consequences and could be the end of human kind. She thought of any possible change she could do without having negative impact towards humankind and she decided that by interfering with peoples dreams would have a positive impact in humanity. but making this decision would take away what she loves most and that is to write. Since people will have better dreams and fantasies they will no longer be interested in reading.

Quotes

 * “I have a great deal of work for you”, he said at last. “As I tell you about it, I want you to keep three people in mind: Jonah, Job, and Noah. Remember them. Be guided by their stories."
 * “It could be made to work,” God said,” but keep in mind that you won’t be coming here again to repair any changes you make. What you do is what people will live with. Or in this case die with."
 * “You’ll go back to the life you remember, at first. But soon, I think you’ll have to find another way of earning a living. Beginning at your age won’t be easy."

Butler's Biography
Octavia Estelle Butler was an African American Science Fiction writer. She was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena California. She was born into a community in Pasadena that was integrated with a lot of racial conflicts. Her father died when she was very young. The majority of her life she was raised her mother. She would experience the verbal abuse her mother would suffer from the white families her mother worked for. From an early age, it was very difficult for her to attend school and do school work because she was very shy and she would get bullied by her classmates in school making her feel insecure about herself. Due to this experiences she spent the majority of her time reading and that is when she became interested in the science fiction genre. From an early age she loved to challenge herself on topics that interested her. One example is when she convinced herself she could wright a better story than the televised show Devil Girl from Mars. Little did she know that her draft would be the basis for her main novel. In most of her writings she portrays her experiences and emotions she had growing up, a perfect example of this is in her story The Evening and the Morning and the Night. Her rise to to success as writer began when she wrote her short story Speech Sounds. It was known that Butler died on February 24, 2005 at the age of 58 outside of her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington. The reasons of her death are inconsistent, which is not really known for sure the reason of her death, but many reported that she died from a Fatal Stroke.

Summary
This short story takes place with the introduction of Rye which is currently living in a world where many people have lost their ability to speak, read and write. She was waiting for a bus which would take her from Los Angeles to Pasadena. Rye was able to sense that trouble was on the way and that is when the multiple started to go of in the bus. This is when Rye decides to get off the bus and wait for the fights to stop. Thats when a bearded man is introduced wearing a Los Angeles City Police uniform. At first Rye doesn't trust the man, but she saw his good intentions in trying to calm the fights and had some trust in him. Rye decides to walk the remaining of her trip to Pasadena. The man gives her an offer to go with him and she accepts. Rye gives the man the name of the Obsidian. Rye is able to still speak. And while on the road she discovers that the man still has the ability to read a map. This makes her jealous and she starts to have intentions of killing him but she doesn't. Later on they come across to what seems to be a man going after a woman with a knife to kill her, they both decide to help her. The obsidian manages to shoot the man but the man managed to still shoot the obsidian in the temple which caused his immediate death. When she decides to take Obsidian to burry him, she encounters the two children of the women who just died. They were scared and she manages to hear the little boy and girl speak. She decided to take them with her.

Quotes

 * "Rye took another step back from him. There was no more LAPD, no more any large organization, governmental or private. There were neighborhood patrols and armed individuals. That was all."
 * "And in this world where the only likely common language was body language, being armed was often enough. She had rarely had to draw her gun or even display it."
 * “I’m Valerie Rye,” she said, savoring the words. “It’s all right for you to talk to me.

Summary
This story starts of by introducing us to a girl named Lynn, who suffers from Duryea-Gode Disease. Her parents force her into what is called Duryea-Gode Disease ward. Very early in the story, while trying to give us an idea of how the ward was, she describes her suicide attempt at the age of fifteen after returning home from the ward. Giving us the reader the idea that the ward could possibly be the worst place in the world. Shortly after this, her father killed her mother and committed suicide himself. This is because a person with Duryea-Gode Disease tend to hurt themselves and also hurt others, they have to live with a strict diet which is mostly concentrated on biscuits or better known as Dog Biscuits. The disiease generally starts to have an effect throughout adulthood. Both of her parents suffered from this disease. Later Lynn goes of to college and decides to live together with four DGDs. She describes that all of them are basically just committed on their academic life and would forget to clean up the house. Lynn was the one the that reminded everyone about their cleaning schedule and they did it without hesitation. Lynn later discovers that this happens because she has a special pheromones which is to have control over people with DGD because both of her parent had DGD. Knowing this effect worries her because she feels that her relationship with Alan, which also has DGD, will die. It was up to her to wether stay with him or drive him away, but keep the uncertainly that he might only love her because he is compelled to her due to her special pheromones.

Quotes

 * " People who don't eat in public, who drink nothing more interesting than water, who smoke nothing at all- people like that are suspicious"
 * " But don't touch anything or anyone. And remember that some of the people you'll see injured themselves before they came to us. They still bear the scars of those injuries. Some of those scars may be difficult to look at, but you'll be in no danger."
 * “I was convinced that somehow if I turned, I would see myself standing there, gray and old, growing small in the distance, vanishing”

Summary
The story starts of with the introduction of T'Gatoi's sister giving off eggs to a family. Then we are introduced to Gan and his family. Gan is giving one egg for himself. T'Gatoi seems to have a strong friendly relationship with Gan's mother, Lien. Everyone shares their egg with no hesitation except for Lien. She doesn't want to eat her part of the egg even though she is not very healthy. But then T-Gatoi convinces Lien to eat the eggs. After this T-Gatoi comes from the outside with a man that is in pain and is giving birth. His name is Bram Lomas. Gan stays to help T-Gatoi with the procedure and it makes him sick and traumatized with the procedure. He ends up throwing up, and also realizing how T'Gatoi had no emotion while Lomas was suffering and in pain. Gan's older brother Qui returns with help and he starts to ask Gan questions of what he just witness. After this Qui told Gan that he once saw once saw a T'lic kill a man who was an N'tlic. After this Gan was being forced to give the gun he used by T-Gatoi because it was against the rules of the preservation. Gan refuses to give the gun back and after having this altercation T-Gatoi admits that he will be impregnated by her that night. This is when Gan realizes why he was giving one egg for himself and also the way his mother was looking at him like it was the last time she was ever going to see him.

Quotes

 * “I like being able to come here,” T’Gatoi said. “This place is a refugee because of you, yet you won’t take care of yourself”
 * “Good,” T’Gatoi looked down at him. “I wish you Terrans could do that at will.
 * “Im healthy and young,” she said. “I won’t leave you as Lomas was left alone, NTlic. I’ll take care of you"

Genereal
McIntyre, Vonda N. et al. “Reflections on Octavia E. Butler.” Science Fiction Studies 37. 3 (November 2010): 433-442. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25746443

BloodChild
Helford, Elyce Rae. "'Would You Really Rather Die than Bear My Young?': The Construction of Gender, Race, and Species in Octavia E. Butler's 'Bloodchild'." African American Review 28.2 (1994): 259-71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041998

Citation Practice
Octavia Butler was shy as a child