Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/CUNY, LaGuardia Community College/The Research Paper: Octavia Butler's Fledgling (Spring 2015)

Extra credit
All extra credit work must be submitted by Thursday, June 11 by 9:00AM. You must also come to the last meeting on June 12 to finish the extra credit with me in class.

There will be three ways to get extra credit points:


 * 1) Submitting a paragraph on missing sections of Butler's biography (instructions on Blackboard). There are two such sections: "Point of View" and "The creation of alternative communities." (+35 points each for the two best paragraphs).
 * 2) Creating a proper citation for a source to go in Kindred's "Further reading" section and, once it has been approved, posting it correctly in that section. (+10 points)
 * 3) Creating a quotation box for a quotation from Kindred and, once it has been approved, posting it correctly to the section it belongs. (+10 or +5 points)

-

A. Kindred sources needing proper citation (+10)
Paste the proper citation directly below your chosen source. Sign your citation.

I need to approve your citation before you post it to the article on Kindred. If you do not follow instructions, you will not receive the extra credit.

1. Hua: Reproducing Time, Reproducing History: Love and Black Feminist Sentimentality in Octavia Butler's "Kindred." (Ebsco): andyyecua

Hua, Linh U. "Reproducing Time, Reproducing History: Love And Black Feminist Sentimentality in Octavia Butler's Kindred. African American Review 44.3 (2011): 391-407. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 June 2015--Andyyecua (talk) 05:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Nicely done, Andyyecua (talk). --DrX (talk) 13:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

2. Flagel: 'It's Almost Like Being There': Speculative Fiction, Slave Narrative, and the Crisis of Representation in Octavia Butler's Kindred.(Ebsco):
 * Flagel, Nadine. "'It's Almost Like Being There': Speculative Fiction, Slave Narrative, and the Crisis of Representation in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Canadian Review of American Studies 42.2 (2012): 216-45. Web.Mazuyuki Eizoku (talk) 18:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

3. Jesser: Blood, Genes and Gender in Octavia Butler's "Kindred" and "Dawn." (Ebsco): beautiful soul

Jesser, Nancy. "Blood, Genes and Gender in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Dawn." Extrapolation 43.1 (2002): 36+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 June 2015.--Beautiful Soul22 (talk) 18:06, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

4. Bastian: "No.": The Narrative Theorizing of Embodied Agency in Octavia Butler's "Kindred." (Ebsco): najahlovespink Bast, Florian. Bast, Florian. "'No.': The Narrative Theorizing of Embodied Agency in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 53.2 (2012): 151-81. Web. --NajahLovesPink (talk) 18:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

5. Robertson: "Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's "Kindred." (Ebsco): unconsciouseclecticism

Robertson, Benjamin. "Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and The Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's Kindred. Science Fiction Studies 37.3 (2010): 362-381. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 June 2015.Unconsciouseclecticism (talk) 10:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Not bad, Unconsciouseclecticism (talk), but the titles of the journal and the database need to be italicized. --DrX (talk) 13:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Unconsciouseclecticism (talk)! --DrX (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

6. Parham: SAYING "YES": Textual Traumas in Octavia Butler's Kindred. (JSTOR): purplelover

Parham, Marisa. "Saying 'Yes': Textual Traumas in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Middle Eastern & North African Writers 32.4 (Winter 2009): 1315-1331. '--Purple lover0516 (talk) 05:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You got the correct information, Purple lover0516 (talk), but the style is not yet MLA. We'll finish it in class.--DrX (talk) 13:14, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

7. Wagers: Seeing "from the far side of the Hill": Narrative, History, and Understanding in "Kindred" and "The Chaneysville Incident." (Ebsco): princessmisshell

Wagers, Kelley. "Seeing “from the Far Side of the Hill”: Narrative, History, and Understanding in Kindred and The Chaneysville Incident." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 34.1 (2009): 23-45. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 June 2015. --Princessmishell (talk) 19:58, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Nicely done, Princessmishell (talk). --DrX (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

8. Dubey: Speculative Fictions of Slavery (Ebsco): divergent forever

Dubey, Madhu. "Speculative Fictions of Slavery." American Literature 82.4 (2010): 779-805. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 June 2015. Divergentforever (talk) 12:23, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Not bad, Divergentforever (talk), but the titles of the journal and the database need to be italicized.

9. Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson on Kindred in Strange Matings: liberatedminds Knabe, Susan and Wendy Gay Pearson. "'Gambling Against History': Queer Kinship and Cruel Optimism in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Ed. Rebecca J. Holden and Nisi Shawl. Seattle, WA : Aqueduct Press, 2013. 51-78.

10. For Butler's biography: Add a proper citation with link to Butler's entry on the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction at http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/butler_octavia :santuros

SFE: The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (Authors : Butler, Octavia E : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia)

B. Kindred and Fledgling quotations (+10 or +5)
Create a boxed quotation to place in the article for Butler's Kindred and paste it the section I have created below. I need to approve your boxed quotation before you post it to the article on Kindred. If you do not follow instructions, you will not receive the extra credit.

Example of a boxed quotation:


 * For the first set of quotations (+10), you must find the appropriate passage in Kindred (available electronically through the library), create the boxed quote, and place it in an appropriate section of the article.
 * For the second set (+5), use the text given below, create the boxed quote, and place it in an appropriate section of the article.

+10 Work:

1. Kevin and Dana differing in their perspectives of the 19th Century: "......." (97): liberatedminds

2. Rufus expressing his “destructive single-minded love” for Alice: "..................." (124): ebeastmond

3. Dana explaining to Kevin that her 20th Century mindset will not allow her to be made a slave: "........." (246): santuros

4. Dana making the decision to kill Rufus: "............." (260): lajevelyn

+5 Work:

1. Dana's recollection of her first whipping: "All I was really aware of was the pain. I thought Weylin meant to kill me. I thought I would die on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lecturing as he beat me. By then, I almost wanted to die. Anything to stop the pain. I vomited. And I vomited again because I couldn’t move my face away." (page 107): beautiful soul

2. Dana explaining to Kevin her family's reaction to her marrying a white man: "I think my aunt accepts the idea of my marrying you because any children we have will be light. Lighter than I am, anyway. She always said I was a little too ‘highly visible’ ...She doesn’t care much for white people but she prefers light-skinned blacks. Figure that out. Anyway, she ‘forgives’ me for you. But my uncle doesn’t. he’s sort of taken this personally...it’s as though I’ve rejected him...he was more hurt than mad. Honestly hurt….he wants me to marry someone like him--someone who looks like him. A black man." (page 111): XRush

3. Dana reporting on the slaves’ attitude toward Rufus: “Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time.” (229): andyyecua

4. Rufus burns Dana's books: "The fire flared up and swallowed the dry paper, and I found my thoughts shifting to Nazi book burnings. Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of ‘wrong’ ideas." (page 141): unconsciouseclecticism

5. Shori's mutualistic and less predatory relationship with her symbionts.: "I wanted that—a home in which my symbionts enjoyed being with me and enjoyed one another and raised their children as I raised mine. That felt right, felt good." (127): princessmisshell

6. Milo Silk, to Shori at the Council of Judgment: "You're not Ina!..."You're not!. And you have no more business at this Council than a clever dog!". (Pg. 238): najahlovespink

7. Shori is acknowledging herself as an Ina and also showing the comparison of how humans and Ina's deal with loss.: "We Ina don't handle loss as well as most humans do. It's a much rather thing with us, and when it happens, the grief is ...almost unbearable". (265): divergentforever

8. Shori takes responsibility for her father's and brother's symbiont after they die and becomes protective of them.: "..I wanted to kill them, had to kill them. How else could I keep my new family safe?" (105): Purplelover

9. Wright, to Shori, when she commands him to seek safety for himself and the rest of her symbionts even if it means leaving her in danger: "That is the most unromantic declaration of love I've ever heard. Or is that what you're saying? Do you love me, Shori, or do I just taste good?". (145)--Liberateminds (talk) 19:24, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Your boxed quotations here
Don't forget to sign your contribution.

--Liberateminds (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--Liberateminds (talk) 19:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--Liberateminds (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--NajahLovesPink (talk) 18:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--Ebeastmond (talk) 18:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)ebeastmond

--Santuros (talk) 18:23, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--Princessmishell (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

--Purple lover0516 (talk) 05:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

--Andyyecua (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

--Unconsciouseclecticism (talk) 10:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Dubey, Madhu. "Speculative Fictions of Slavery." American Literature 82.4 (2010): 779-805. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 June 2015. Divergentforever (talk) 12:25, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

--Princessmishell (talk) 18:04, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

--Beautiful Soul22 (talk) 18:10, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Divergentforever (talk) 18:57, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Instructions for Research Assignment 5

1. From the questionnaire for the article, copy the thesis. Go over it with your team to make sure you understand it and can explain it to others.

2. a) List 3-5 main ideas of the article.


 * b) Next to each idea, write 1-2 examples (or more) from Fledgling that the author uses to illustrate the idea.


 * c) Cite the pages where these ideas and examples can be found in the article.


 * d) Explain how each idea is important to our understanding of Fledgling.

Go over the ideas to make sure you understand them and can explain them to others.

3. Choose 3-5 themes the author discusses in the article (if there is a theme not covered on this list, just write it up):


 * Agency


 * Mutualistic symbiosis


 * The revision of the vampire figure


 * Hybridity/ cyborg identity


 * Racism/speciecism


 * Afrofuturism


 * Feminism


 * Difference as a means to survival


 * Alternative sexual relations/ sexuality/ family relations

4. Write an MLA-style citation for the article (sometimes the citation can be found in the databases)

Bast, Florian. “I Won't Always Ask”: Complicating Agency in Octavia Butler's Fledgling
Thesis

Bast argues that Fledgling complicates Western views of agency (a person's ability to choose and act upon their choice; self determination).

Main Ideas


 * Bast focuses on the types of agency displayed by the main characters and how they complicate Western views of agency. Shori is a typical protagonist who begins with little agency and ends in charge of her life (no page numbers, starting on paragraph 7). In contrast, Wright begins the story as a free agent but his "happily ever after" ending with Shori requires that he give up some of his agency (no page numbers, starting on paragraph 15).


 * A character's agency is also restricted by biological realities, as the addictive relationship created by the Ina bite cannot be undone (no page numbers, starting on paragraph 19).


 * The Ina-human mutualistic symbiosis also challenges traditional ways of thinking about agency, especially because the relationship is hierarchical, with the Ina as the masters of their symbionts (no page numbers, starting on paragraph 25).

Themes


 * Agency
 * Mutualistic symbiosis
 * Racism/speciecism

Citation 

Bast, Florian. "‘I won't always ask.’ Complicating Agency in Octavia Butler's Fledgling." Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 11 (2010). 

**Recommended for Teams 1 and 4** ---

Brox, Ali. "Every age has the vampire it needs”: Octavia Butler's Vampiric Vision in Fledgling
Thesis

Brox argues that Shori's hybridity represents the flux and flexibility necessary to instigate change in the strict hierarchy between Ina and humans.

Main Ideas


 * Shori's hybridity "opens up a space of cultural uncertainty and instability" that subverts authority (391).


 * "Racial discourse becomes the means through which the Ina/Human species conflicted is articulated, and this discourse creates a hierarchy that Butler challenges her characters, and the readers to overcome" (396). Shori's description of herself as being "made black" points both to the biological reality of her skin tone, which was engineered to neutralize the Ina's allergy to the sun, and the social construction of blackness as a marker of difference (397).


 * "Shori, and the hybrid figure in general, exemplifies the delusion of purity" (398). "The 'pure' families are forced to confront their past Other status when they see Shori." Before the Ina became the "superior" species, they were oppressed and killed (398). "Butler does not portray Shori as someone whose mixed blood is tainted or weakened compared to previous pure origins, but rather emphasizes the advantages Shori possesses (399). "Shori poses a threat to the Silks because she reminds them of their false claim to purity and superiority" (402).


 * Shori's reproductive potential challenges Ina superiority because "science could not be blamed for the outcome; rather, the Ina would be forced to confront the fear and anxiety that result from the recognition that hybrid is just as 'normal' as 'pure' is" (400).

Themes


 * Hybridity
 * The construction or race
 * Hierarchy; racism/speciecism/supremacism

Citation 

Brox, Ali "Every age has the vampire it needs": Octavia Butler's Vampiric Vision in Fledgling." Utopian Studies 19.3 (2008): 391-409.

**Recommended for Teams 1 and 3**

-

Evans, Shari. From “Hierarchical Behavior” to Strategic Amnesia: Structures of Memory and Forgetting in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling
Thesis

Fledgling proposes that the oppressed can best combat their oppression through the use of a "strategic amnesia": "the simultaneous forgetting of the things that would cripple us and the ethical remembering of the past" (251).

Main Ideas


 * Shori is not just different because she has been made black. She is different because she has amnesia. This memory loss "reduces her belief in the underlying and seemingly 'natural' structures that form [Ina] society" (245). Shori's amnesia allows her to decide for herself, with the aid of her symbionts, what type of Ina she will become: "Shori, because of her amnesia, must re-construct her relationship to herself and her culture, must re-create an identity, and must re-learn cultural memory and how to perform it. Embedded in this, however, is the implication that she can choose what she wants to remember and enact....Removed from culture by her traumatic memory loss, Shori may choose her own integration into and participation in Ina society according to her own ethical principles" (253).


 * The novel's mutualistic symbiosis is an example of Butler's idea of "partnership" in her novel Parable of the Talents, where partnership is "offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm....Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or / avoided must somehow be partnered" (242). "As the symbionts depend on their Ina, so the Ina need the blood and companionship of their symbionts. The Ina respond to this need-based hierarchy in disparate ways" : resentfulness mixed with love; as a relationship with a "less gifted cousin" (as humans have with apes), as "a weaving of relationship and care" (246).


 * "Butler has always questioned hierarchy and power by creating societies that clearly echo our own, and thereby calling into relief the way the powerful can choose to become parasites or to recognize their own needs and move toward symbiosis instead" (241).


 * "The Silk family... curse Shori at the trial with racial slurs that belie all their attempts to distinguish themselves [from humans]. As in Butler's other novels, the self-serving ideology apparent in the Ina's naturalization of their characteristics (height, skin color, acute memory, health, etc.) and the hierarchy and Ina-supremacist practice that result from it echo Western and particularly American racism and the hierarchies of white supremacy" (249).

Themes
 * Mutualistic symbiosis
 * Difference as a mean to survival
 * Agency
 * Racism/speciecism

Citation 

Evans, Shari. "From 'Hierarchical Behavior' to Strategic Amnesia: Structures of Memory and Forgetting in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling." In Rebecca J. Holden and Nisi Shawl. Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Seattle, WA : Aqueduct Press, 2013.

**Recommended for Teams 1, 2, 3, and 4**

--

Morris, Susana M. Black Girls Are from the Future: Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling
Thesis

Fledgling can be classified as Afrofuturist feminist speculative fiction because it challenges our sense of what is "normal" by re-imimaging “identity, kinship, and intimacy through nonmonogamous queer, human-vampire hybrid families."

Main Ideas

1. Definitions of Afrofuturism and black feminism:


 * "Speculative fiction, that is, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and futurist fiction, has largely been (mis)understood as a genre written only by Whites (mostly men) about whites (again, mostly men). However, by the end of the twentieth century black writers such as Samuel Delaney, Octavia E. Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, and Nalo Hopkinson, among others, reflected a tradition black speculative fiction known as Afrofuturism" (152).


 * "[N]ot only does Afrofuturism posit that blacks will exist in the future, as opposed to being harbingers of social chaos and collapse, but in “recovering the histories of counter-futures” Afrofuturism insists that blacks fundamentally are the future and that Afrodiasporic cultural practices are vital to imagining the continuance of human society" (153).


 * "Black feminist thought seeks to uncouple dominance from power as blacks assert their agency... [the] movement toward a liberated voice...is not about simply replacing the dominant voice with the voice of the marginalized; rather, liberation is cast in terms of coalition and power sharing, methodologies that would incite a future quite different from the hegemony of present structures" (153-154).

2. Fledgling is Afrofuturist feminist speculative fiction. It also belongs in the tradition of "black women vampire fiction."


 * "The novel offers a black feminist Afrofuturist epistemology that transgressively revises the contemporary vampire genre by reconfiguring the trope of the vampire from enchanted icon of whiteness to consider how race, sexuality, and intimacy can function in potentially progressive ways. Fledgling radically reimagines identity, kinship, and intimacy through nonmonogamous queer human-vampire hybrid families that have a variety of configurations, yet it also troubles any easy notions of a vampire utopia by ambivalently regarding the concepts of free will and symbiosis. Furthermore, Butler imagines that vampires are vulnerable to constraints similar to those faced by people in communities that are marginalized because race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability" (146-147).


 * "Various texts by black women reveal a thriving speculative-fiction community that stands in stark counterpoint to many of the most popular current depictions of vampire lore": Jewelle Gomez’s novel The Gilda Stories, Tananarive Due’s African Immortals series and L. A. Banks’s twelve-volume Vampire Huntress series, and Butler's Fledgling. (151-152).


 * "Octavia Butler is one member of a thriving cohort of Afrofuturist feminist writers whose work is actively reconfiguring the contours of speculative fiction. Her work stands alongside of and is in conversation with the work of writers such as Jewelle Gomez, whose pioneering work in queer speculative fiction has inspired more nuanced renderings of black sexualities; Tananarive Due, whose recent work in horror has revolutionized the genre by focusing on complex black heroines; L. A. Banks, whose dark fantasy/horror novels rival Buffy’s girl power but without the racist dynamics; Nalo Hopkinson, whose Afrodiasporic tales of fantasy and folklore skillfully blend tradition with a futurist vision; and Nnendi Okorafo-Mbachu, whose stories of precolonial Africa incite us to reenvision the continent’s past and future. Their works stand as, in the words of Kimberly Nichelle Brown (2010), decolonizing texts that destabilize normative notions of what is possible by creating worlds in which black women not only have the power to transform their lives, communities, and even species but do so routinely and, often, unapologetically" (162).

3. The traditional view of the vampire is replaced with a co-dominance between vampires and humans.

Contemporary white European versions of the vampire use people as a food source or as a tool to do what they want by means of enhanced sexual experience brought on by the bite. In Fledgling, both humans and Ina (vampires) need each other. Rather than just the humans wanting the sexual relief from a vampire feeding on them, they have more of a symbiotic relationship by living together.


 * Morris relates Fledgling's symbiosis to the Afrofuturistic feminist point of view of how to disarm oppression: "Butler’s Afrofuturistic vampires...break from many of the traditional or conventionally popular tropes. These vampires are a biological species, not a supernatural force. Some of them are “daywalkers,” or, in other words, can move about in the sun. They have preternatural strength but they are not invincible. They have seductive powers of persuasion that they largely use for good, not evil. They live in nonnormative groups with or among human beings and are (generally) not antagonistic to humans" (155-156).


 * "Butler’s delineation of “mutualism” is not only how vampires and humans nourish themselves within the world of the novel but also a way of knowing and experiencing the world and of reconfiguring intimacy that, in its most ideal state, is centered on cooperation, interdependence, honesty, and complex understandings of power. In Fledgling, mutualism not only recalibrates intimacy and family, however, but also becomes an ideal, though imperfect, futurist social model, one that is fundamentally at odds with racism, sexism, and sectarian violence" (156).


 * “Clearly, mutualism helps to stem some of the frailties of life for both humans and vampires; however, Butler notes that mutualism also incites complex negotiations of intimacy in other ways. Human symbionts are not simply sustenance for the Ina—they are key to their survival in other ways. The Ina need their human symbionts for food, companionship, physical touch, and sexual pleasure, although the Ina can get some of these needs met with one another. In other words, the Ina do not just require human blood from anonymous donors, they need to coexist and share intimacy with human beings (and each other) in order to survive” (158).


 * "In line with Afrofuturist feminism’s interest in the complex negotiations around power sharing, Butler also portrays symbionts struggling with their increasing codependence on their Ina companions" (159).

Themes


 * Mutualistic symbiosis
 * The revision of the vampire figure
 * Afrofuturism
 * Feminism
 * Alternative sexual relations/ sexuality/ family relations

Recommended for Teams

Citation

Morris, Susana M. "Black Girls Are From The Future: Afrofuturist Feminism In Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling." Women's Studies Quarterly 40.3/4 (2012): 146-166. **Recommended for Teams 2, 3, and 4** -

Nayar, Pramod. Vampirism and Posthumanism in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling
Thesis

Fledgling proposes species miscegenation as a means to positive change. To do so, Butler domesticates both the figure of the savage vampire and of the aggressive and competitive human to create a new type of inter or companion species.

Main Ideas


 * Domestication through deracination (loss): "Butler offers a step up the evolutionary ladder by positing a mutual deracination: the vampire becomes less vampiric and acquires more human qualities (emotional attachments, communitarianism in Fledgling) and the human loses some of her/his qualities (sickness, sexual possessiveness). It is only by losing some of the essences that species can evolve" (no page). "[I]t is through the loss...of specifically vampiric qualities that Shori becomes fit for human cohabitation, being now far more attuned to the needs of the human 'symbionts'" (no page).


 * Domestication through an alternate history: "Butler... proposes that species mixing is a bio-historical "fact," offering a history of non-hierarchic, interdependent and unified ecosystems where vampires and humans co-existed. It suggests that vampires not only evolved like us, they evolved with us, humans" (no page).


 * Domestication through genetic engineering: "[human] melanin (the skin-darkening pigment) [is necessary] for domestication and survival even for superhuman species with great abilities such as vampires." Thus, a skin pigmentation that has marked humans as inferior becomes the means of positive evolution and survival for the Ina" (no page).


 * "The entire tale works to show the necessity of deracination, for both humans and vampires, so that they may respect the other species and coexist peacefully" (no page).
 * Fledgling maps an entire evolutionary scheme through its theme of domestication: from domestication to companion--or rather companionate--species. To be companionate one deracinates, takes on the qualities of the Other race. To survive is to become companionate species" (no page numbers).

Themes
 * Difference as a means to survival


 * Hybridity/ cyborg identity


 * The revision of the vampire figure

Citation

Nayar, Pramod K. "Vampirism and Posthumanism in Octavia Butler's ''Fledgling." Notes on Contemporary Literature'' 41.2 (2011).

**Recommended for Teams 1, 2, and 4**

---

Sanchez-Taylor, Joy. Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and Daniel Jose Older’s "Phantom Overload": The Ethnic Undead
Thesis

Sanchez-Taylor argues that Butler uses "a hybrid character to expose the effects of colonization on ethnic peoples" (1).

Main Ideas


 * Revision of the vampire figure:


 * "Butler’s representation of a black, female vampire figure challenges popular culture’s depiction of the vampire as a symbol of white masculinity" (2). Traditionally, the vampire is depicted as embodying deviant sexuality and decadence, or as a foil for humanity (3-4). It also serves to project repressed desires (sexuality) and fears (sexual or racial contamination) so that they can be safely disowned and destroyed (4).


 * In contrast, Shori should be placed within the Afrofuturistic tradition that challenges the stereotype of vampire as white (5). "Butler follows in the Afrofuturist footsteps of Jewelle Gomez and Tananarive Due by creating a vampire that challenges the traditional depiction offered by authors such as Stoker or Rice.... Like Gomez and Due, Butler’s depiction of a black, female main vampire character challenges the white, male vampire figure found in many writings, but her description of the white Ina as a genetically flawed, imperfect species also places vampires on a similar level with humans. Rather than being portrayed as dominant, sexualized figures or human saviors, the Ina must work with humans and accept genetic modification in order to ensure their survival" (10).


 * "Butler plays with the contemporary fascination for vampires as advanced beings by making the Ina an imperfect species capable of their own social issues. Butler’s choice to make her protagonist a mixed-race, mixed-species character not only challenges previous depictions of monsters, it also serves as a commentary on intolerance as a social ill that limits inhibits humanity’s ability to survive and adapt to new circumstances" (11).


 * By fusing the vampire genre with science fiction, Butler creates a new type of vampire: "Some Ina believe that their species evolved from humans, while others argue that Ina originally came to Earth from another planet. Both theories create a fuzzy origin for the Ina that makes them a multifaceted species; they can be viewed as vampires, evolved humans, and aliens, respectively" (11).


 * Hybridity:


 * Shori as minority: "Shori’s position as an African American Ina and her ability to pass on needed genetic advantages gives her a place in the Ina community, yet she is not fully accepted by all of the Ina peoples" (8).


 * "Shori becomes Butler’s biological experiment to inject blackness into the myths of the vampire and a 'pure' human race. As a black, hybrid figure, Shori represents Butler’s attempt to combat depictions of racial and ethnic mixture as negative and depictions of white males as cultural saviors" (12).


 * Shori's hybrid status serves as a comment on the history of eugenics by reversing the fear of racial contamination through "black" blood: "[Butler] utilizes genetic manipulation in Fledgling to make Shori a hybrid character that embodies the advantages of two species. Fittingly, the human advantage that Shori gains is black skin, a direct reference to early U.S. views of racial eugenics. The 'one drop' rule that resulted from theories of racial eugenics turned black blood into a biological contaminant and created fear of intermingling utilized by authors of 'passing' novels" (12-13). "Fledgling employs the trope of genetic manipulation to invert views of racial eugenics; instead of a deficiency, black blood becomes a source of salvation" (13).


 * Shori's hybridity represents the advantage of two species and therefore is linked to survival (15).


 * "Shori’s genetic advantages and breeding potential make her both a threat and an ally, giving her the potential power to construct a new species that challenges current hierarchies" (15).


 * "Butler links survival to genetic hybridity, indicating that in order to survive, humans and Ina will have to accept new racial and species identifications" (16).


 * Shori's hybridity also symbolizes the "correct" type of mutualistic symbiosis: she literally embodies human and Ina DNA working together (17).


 * Symbiotic mutualism:


 * "The Ina could be viewed as an 'advanced' species that has the right to rule over biologically 'unevolved' humans. Yet Butler makes these two species equally interdependent, creating a system where both parties contribute important biological functions. Butler’s metaphor for mutualism becomes the basis of her views on white/black racial relations....Butler’s depiction of Shori and human/Ina relations becomes a commentary on the need for humans to stop defining themselves in terms of hierarchy and begin to recognize the importance of mutualistic relationships" (17).


 * " Butler is sure to note the discomfort of human symbionts like Wright towards their new living arrangements to demonstrate that Ina households are not utopic; rather, human/Ina households challenge humans to put aside racism and homophobia" (18).


 * Race as construction:


 * "The fact that the majority of the Ina side with Shori, despite the fact that some of them are still hesitant about the changes she represents, demonstrates the possibility of Ina and humans eventually embracing racial and species difference" (21-22).


 * The displacement of the notion of race into a species conflict allows Butler to have a black protagonist and have a discussion of intolerance without the need to partake in the history of human racism (22).

Citation

Sanchez-Taylor, Joy Ann. "Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and Daniel Jose Older’s "Phantom Overload": The Ethnic Undead." Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity. Dissertation. University of South Florida. Tampa: USF Scholar Commons, 2014.

**Recommended for Teams 1, 2, and 4**

Shaviro, Steven. Exceeding the Human: Power and Vulnerability in Octavia Butler’s Fiction.
Thesis

Shaviro argues that Butler’s narratives, as exemplified by the novels Dawn and Fledgling, are “emotionally resonant” because they “bear witness” to the intolerable violence and cruelty caused by current forms of human domination. Thus, Butler’s stories tend to be about the pain of being reborn into a world where hierarchical antagonism not only excludes and confines us but also coerces us into being accomplices to our own oppression.

Main Ideas


 * "Vampires are usually disruptive forces from the unconscious. They give body to our least avowable desires and fears. But there’s nothing atavistic about Butler’s Ina...: they have a culture, with laws and customs, kinship groups, a religion and an ethics and a politics, and disputes and power struggles about all these things — just as any group of human beings does" (227).


 * "Butler invents a whole biology and anthropology of vampire life. The Ina live for 500 years or more. When injured, they can self-repair...on a diet of red meat.....Ina society is more or less matriarchal — female Ina are more powerful than male — and is organized around gender-segregated extended families. They mate and reproduce in family-based groups (a group of brothers mates with a group of sisters from another family). The male young live with the family of their fathers, the female with the family of their mothers.... In Fledgling, vampires almost never kill their human prey: they live together with them, and have sex with them, in extended families of seven or eight human symbionts for each vampire. Whether male or female, vampires generally have symbionts of both genders, and the symbionts often develop sexual relationships with one another. So all in all, Ina society involves both vampires and human beings, involved in complex webs of polyamory" (227-228).


 * "Butler writes of how love involves dependency, loss of autonomy, and unequal power relations; even when both sides in the relationship have both given themselves over unconditionally to an Other, they are never equal in (self-)abandonment. This leads to paradoxes and impasses...that are almost too painful to contemplate....[Usually,] Butler conveys this painful sense of dependency in love from the point of view of the dominated partner... In Fledgling, however, Butler approaches the same knot of dependency and inequality — which is yet love — from the point of view of the dominating partner" (229).


 * "Fledgling is also, like most of Butler’s work, a story about race. The Ina...seem a lot like Jews (I mean, both like Jews as they actually were in European society for so many centuries,and like the images of “Jews” as anti-Semitic Christian bigotry portrayed them).... [They are] almost grotesquely albino. (This is one of the very few traits that Butler retains from traditional vampire fiction). Shori is a minority within this minority, as she is the world’s only black vampire.... And it emerges that racism among the Ina is why her family has been murdered and she is a target. The Ina cling to their unique heritage, and this leads some of them to a fanatical belief in their racial purity and superiority. They hate Shori because she is “part human”..., amplified by the fact that the “human” part of her is black" (229-230).


 * "One of the greatest virtues of Fledgling — as, indeed, of much of Butler’s fiction — is that it makes debates about 'genetic determinism' and 'social construction' almost entirely irrelevant. In Butler’s world, we are bound and limited both by our genes and by our cultural inheritance; both are constraints that we cannot ignore, and yet both are susceptible (under certain conditions) to alteration. So the question is never whether something is 'in our genes' or merely a 'cultural construction': everything is both, and there is no reason to see either 'nature' or 'culture' as more restricting than the other. The question, with both culture and biology, is how we are constrained and how we are free; what our limits are, and what powers we can exercise within (and despite) those limits....In depicting power relationships as host/parasite intercations, Butler looks as much to the future--with its prospects of biotechnologies that will alter what we think of as "human" quite profoundly--as she does to the past--when the "human" was defined restrictively asn abusively, in an age of slavery and colonialism" (226-227).

Themes


 * Mutualistic Symbiosis
 * Agency
 * Alternative sexual relations/sexuality/family relations
 * Racism/ Speciecism

Citation

Shaviro, Steven. "Exceeding the Human: Power and Vulnerability in Octavia Butler's Fiction." In Rebecca J. Holden and Nisi Shawl. Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Seattle, WA : Aqueduct Press, 2013.

**Recommended for Teams 1, 2, 3, and 4** -

Strong, Melissa J. The Limits of Newness: Hybridity in Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling
Thesis

Strong argues that Fledgling presents two types of “newness”: the prospect of “identity hybridization” through genetic manipulation, and the unorthodox familial and sexual arrangements of the Ina. The opposition to innovation comes in the form of a group of conservative Ina, who commit the equivalent of a “hate crime” to destroy the product of genetic manipulation, and from Wright, who represents the voice of the reader who is uncomfortable with the homo, bi, and pansexuality of the Ina.

Main Ideas

1. “Innovation”- Shori challenges societal norms due to her hybridity and alternative sexual lifestyle (Strong 37). She is the result of a genetic experimentation that makes her have both human and Ina characteristics, as well as being of a mixed-race. Strong argues that these perceived differences result in an increased “sameness” with both Ina and humans. Shori also engages in both same-sex and opposite-sex partnerships, thus ignoring the heterosexual/homosexual binary.

2. Speciesism – The Silk Family opposes Shori’s innovative aspects and represents a “speciesist” point-of-view. Their thinking is of a hierarchical Ina/human binary (Strong 31). Milo Silk, an elder member of the family, suggests that Shori be seen by a human doctor, implying that she is not truly an Ina. Both Milo and Katharine consider Shori to be somehow biologically different to the rest of the Ina population, as not even belonging to the same species as them. They refuse to see the shared characteristics between Shori and the rest of the Ina; instead, they dehumanize her because of her differences. They commit the equivalent of a hate-crime by destroying all of Shori’s family, fueled by an ideology of “racial purity” that is not much different than that of Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan (Strong 33).

3. Pan-sexuality and the defiance of the norm - According to Strong, the impossibility to categorize what we do not understand creates the discomfort which is basically the main reason to all the phobias in the book. Wright, like Milo, has a very conservative view when it comes down to sexuality or how Ina's handle their relationships. Wright, according to Strong, feels uncomfortable when he is exposed to the ambiguity and pan-sexuality of the Ina. Also, Strong remarks that Wright clearly expresses a feeling of "homophobia"; for him what is ideal is an exclusive relationship. This "fear" is what draws him close to the opposite or antagonist of the novel, Milo. Wright represents the norm for human beings as Milo represents the norm for Inas. They are both according to Strong disturbed by Shori's difference. Strong gives the following as an example of Wright's frustration: "When Shori suggests he marry and have his own human children in order to feel less possessive of her, he becomes angry, asking 'What am I supposed to do? Help produce the next generation of symbionts?'"(40).

Shori has a strong sense of morality, compassion, and justice—“high-order traits” that are universal to everyone (Strong 29).

Themes


 * Racism/speciesism


 * The revision of the vampire figure. --According to Strong, while vampires in Western literature are often characterized as being ruthless, threatening, and predatory in nature, Shori is depicted as less powerful. Not only is her physical appearance less intimidating but also her more egalitarian and compassionate treatment of her symbionts suggests that she considers her symbionts as mutual partners rather than victims. The traditional view of vampires as being harmful is reversed in Shori's efforts to prevent unnecessary harm to others.


 * Alternative sexual relation/ sexuality/ family relations. --Fledging challenges social norms concerning sexuality and family relations by portraying characters involved in alternative sexual and familiar relationships. Ina families allow both same-sex and opposite-sex partnerships, thus ignoring the widely accepted notion of a heterosexual/homosexual binary. The boundaries between familiar and romantic love are also blurred, as Ina family members are sexually involved with one another. Fledgling defies the societal expectation of sexual categorization and proposes alternatives ways for individuals to relate to one another.

Citation

Strong, Melissa J. "The Limits of Newness: Hybridity in Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling." FEMSPEC: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Journal Dedicated to Critical and Creative Work in the Realms of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Surrealism, Myth, Folklore, and Other Supernatural Genres 11.1 (2011): 27-43.

**Recommended for Teams 2, 3, and 4**

“Love at First Bite” by Ron Charles
Summary & Evaluation

Charles' review of Fledgling points out the differences between the " normal" vampire stories and the Ina relationships with their "victims." He emphasizes that the hybrid creation Shori is a threat to previous generations. Racism and sexual relationships are also topics of great controversy. He also acknowledges that relationships between humans and vampires in Fledgling are very distinct because the relationship is mutually beneficial.

Quotations

 * "Fledgling doesn't just resurrect the pale trappings of vampire lore, it completely transforms them in a startlingly original story about race, family and free will."


 * "There's not a drop of Bela Lugosi in these pages, but Fledgling exercises the same hypnotic power the old Count projected onto his victims. Squirming in my chair, I was totally hooked, sometimes nauseated, anxious to put it down, but unable to look away. Go back, go back!"


 * "Shori and her first victim/volunteer, a young contractor named Wright, must discover this ancient arrangement [of mutualistic symbiosis] largely on their own, working out the dimensions of their relationship amid Shori's visceral needs and Wright's understandable confusion. (He's never had sex with a 10-year-old girl before. The orgasmic feeding scenes are mercifully brief but still persistently repulsive.)"

Citation
Charles, Ron. "Love at First Bite." The Washington Post. Washingtonpost.com. 30 Oct. 2005.

Review by Sandra Y. Govan
Summary & Evaluation

Govan reviewed the novel very positively, proclaiming that Fledgling has "something for everyone." The novel appeals to Butler's "tripartite" audience, or those interested in African American, science fiction, and feminist topics. She also mentions that the novel does not rely on the supernatural or gothic elements that are typical of the vampire genre. Instead, the appeal of the novel revolves around Shori's intense story, which grabs the reader due to her fierce determination to survive and learn about her identity and people. Also notable is how Butler portrays vampires not as extraterrestrial or supernatural beings, but as a species that coexist along with humans on the same planet. She applauds how the nature of the storyline touches upon many of Butler's usual topics--community, family, mutuality, ethics, and female relationships--while intriguing the reader with exciting scenes of sex, romance, and mystery.

Quotations

 * "An extremely well-crafted science fiction story, the novel engages us and is exciting because it invokes and riffs upon vampire myth and legend while wearing a number of masks—murder mystery, crime novel, coming-of-age, innocence-to-experience, initiation, quest tale, and outsider/survivor novel."


 * "We don’t usually connect Octavia E. Butler to horror fiction or gothic romance. Yet while the two popular fiction forms may appear at first to be entirely different genres and worlds apart, they are in fact related; vampire tales are recognized as a subset of science fiction.”


 * "Defining her, identifying her kind, who they are and what they do, is part of the novel’s ability to hold our attention."

Citation
Govan, Sandra Y. "Fledgling." Rev. of Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler. Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora 6.2/7.1 (Fall/Winter 2005-Spring/Summer 2006): 40-43.

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Review by Charles L. Crow
Summary & Evaluation

Crow said that it was a dark, elegantly written fable that followed the life of a vampire Shori, who does what she needs to in order to survive. The title of this journal was Gothic Studies, which makes sense because instead of criticizing the dark aspects of the stories, Crow praises them. According to Crow, there are many examples of these dark and unusual themes such as Shori's first sexual encounter with her first symbiont was something close to pedophilia and making Shori a vampire with amnesia is a great plot twist because she has to re-learn her Ina history in order to survive.

Evaluation: "Fledgling is an adventure saga, a complex and truly weird love story, and a tale of murder, justice, and revenge. As we expect of Butler, her fable is wise and elegantly crafted. At its conclusion, the triumphant Shori is on the threshold of adult Ina life, and Butler leaves open the possibility of a sequel, or even a multi-volume Ina saga."

Quotations
"Her first symbiont is an athletic young construction worker. Their initial sexual encounter is a typical uncanny Butler scene, being at once a vampire blood feeding, a cross-species coupling of the sort that always fascinates this author, and something uncomfortably close to pedophilia. As Shori’s journey continues, she will weave another man and three women (one of whom will be killed by an enemy) into the complex group marriage typical of Ina."
 * Alternative sexual relations/ sexuality/ family relations

"[Butler's] stories often involve a young black woman or girl with a special talent or mutation (she cannot help experiencing other people’s emotions or physical sensations, for example), or who is placed in a bizarre situation (sent back in time to save a white male ancestor, or forced to breed with alien invaders)" "In Fledgling, Butler places her stamp on the vampire novel, a tradition with which she has become fascinated recently." "Butler’s vampires are not magical, and do not turn humans into other vampires. Indeed, Fledgling may be the least Gothic of Butler’s fictions. Yet Butler makes unsettling demands of the reader, as always, and we must at the beginning accept as narrator and heroine a vampire whose first act is to kill and eat a man who is trying to help her."
 * Afrofuturism
 * The revision of the vampire figure

Citation
Crow, Charles L. "Fledgling." Rev. of Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler. Gothic Studies 8.2. (Nov. 2006): 142-143.

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“Living the Undead Life” by Susanna Sturgis
Summary & Evaluation

Butler wants her readers to be surprised as well as asking questions. Sturgis feels that some readers would be amazed and would be excited by the relationship of the Ina and the human.

Quotations

 * "In classic science-fictional style, Butler starts from a "what if": what if, instead of treating human beings as prey, the Ina based their social organization on their symbiotic relationship with humans? Out of this thought-experiment arises a plausible structure that allows Butler to explore her favorite issues: power, leadership, individual integrity, interdependence, and difference and the cost of human survival.


 * "The vampire premise is perfectly suited to themes that Butler has been exploring since her earliest novels: interdependence, freedom and unfreedom, and the cost of human survival."


 * "[Half of the novel is] a courtroom drama without the courtroom, and with strong overtones of Nuremberg—if the Nazis could have been brought to justice soon after they took the law into their own hands, and before they could corrupt the entire social fabric and destroy millions of people."


 * "In Octavia Butler's worlds, change can be and often is terrifying, but the biggest folly is to refuse it, to deny change is to abdicate one's responsibility to help shape it."

Citation
Sturgis, Susanna J. "Living the Undead Life." Rev. of Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler. Women's Review of Books January 2006: 11.

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Review by Rob Gates
Summary & Evaluation

Gates describes how Butler’s strange way to start the novel shows us right away that the novel will not be anything like other vampire stories. The narrator starts off clueless and lost and during the novel she seek for answers from her past to discover who she is and what exactly she is.

Gates remarks that the main theme of racism is mostly expressed by the Ina side instead of the human, and regardless of all the advantages that Shori's mixture represent for the Ina, she is the target of prejudice. While the Ina, according to Gates, see Shori as an outsider, her relationship with humans is marked by the intimacy that she shares with her symbionts, providing them with pleasure through the venom in her saliva, unconditional care, and a prolonged life.

While Gates depicts all the important aspects of the novel, he also express his discontent by the fact that the novel starts fast and then starts to slow down after the second half of the book. Gates concludes that, overall, the book is not perfect but it is still an amazing job.

Evaluation: "Fledgling is certainly not a perfect book. The pacing in the second half of the book is quite slow at times, and the dynamics of the Ina trial did not sustain my interest well. A large number of Ina families and characters are introduced and discussed over a number of pages, but play no significant role in the situation or outcome. And Shori's physical appearance, while making for an interesting conceit, played a far weaker role than it probably should have in the story's action. The ending of the book also seemed rather anticlimactic. Shori's security issues are dealt with, but the social issues and questions raised within the book are left internally unresolved and unanswered. Despite these flaws, it's a fine example of Butler's work, full of thoughtful studies of different social structures, human dynamics, and our own biases and expectations."

Quotations

 * "She is the embodiment of miscegenation. She is an outsider to the Ina, an 'other' to humanity. She is called at various times a dog, a dirty little nigger bitch, a murdering black mongrel bitch, and more. Shori's family—the ones who mingled Ina and human genetic material—are burned for their "crime" by racial purists."


 * "Shori also serves as an ideal guide to examine relationship dynamics and free will."


 * "Butler applies her usual brand of social commentary on race, gender, prejudice, and relationships to the vampire story and produces a work both disturbing and thoughtful."


 * "Highly eroticized, definitely sexual, the mix of feeding and pleasure-giving between Shori and her humans simultaneously enthralls and creeps out at the same time, throughout the book."

Citation
Gates, Rob. "Fledgling by Octavia Butler." Rev. of Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler. Strange Horizons. 6 March 2006.