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Citation Practice

Octavia Butler was shy as a child.

Bloodchild

The story is about a family compounds by the mother, brother, and sisters of Gan, who are humans living in a different planet where men give birth. The story begins at Gan's last night of childhood, when the family spend time with another Tlic specie called T'Gatoi which was a family's friend and uses to visit them often. These humans use to eat sterile tlic eggs which make them strong and have a madecine effect. However, T'Gatoi needs humans to keep herself warm and produce more eggs. Therefore, both get benefits from each other to have a long life. T'Gatoi and Gan's mother who her name is Lien grow up together and have a friendship. The friendship was so strong that Lien even had promised T'Gatoi give her one of her children who is Gan because Terrans are supposed to do it and she rathered her than a stranger Tlic. One day T'Gatoi was helping a man called Bram Lomas who was giving birth and his Tlic was not there to help him. Gan was in the scene helping T'Gatoi, and he realized that he will be giving birth in the future. Gan disagreed with what was happening because the man was suffering, so he tried to suiced himself and in that moment T'Gatoi thought that he was trying to kill her. There was a dispute between them because Gan was thinking that Terrans was host animals for Tlic, and T'Gatoi was thinking the opposite, in dispite of using them to give birth more species.

Quotes

• "Did you think I would sell him for eggs? For long life? My son?"

• "T'Gatoi had even introduced my mother to the man who became my father"

• "There had been incidents right after the preserve was established. Terrans shooting Tlic, shooting N'tlic. This was before the joining of families began, before everyone had a personal stake in keeping the peace"

Speech Sounds

It is a story where virus strikes humanity, and some people cannot speak, some can´t read or write, some lose their memories (or combinations, all of the above). The story is about a woman called Rye who a day is rinding on a bus filled with people which is going to another city. A fight starts inside the bus which causes the chaos, and when the bus stops Rye exists to be away of the commotion. In a car Rye sees a bearded man who is wearing a Los Angeles Police Department uniform and identified as Obsidian. He throws a gas canister into the bus trying to disperse the people. Obsidian who doesn't speak, makes a sign to Rye to leave in his car and then he beging to take her where she was going. On their way. they see a man trying to kill a woman, and Obsidian kills him. The woman who was formerly stabbed dies. In a moment where Obsidian was distracted, the man who was shot, grabs Obsidian's gun and shoots him. Obsidian dies, and Rye sees two children who she thinks are the children of the woman who wa murdered, and decide to take care of them.

Quotes

• "Two young men were involved in a disagreement of some kind, or, more likely, a misunderstanding".
• "Obsidian had been the protector, had chosen that role for who knew what reason".

• “I’m Valerie Rye,” she said, savoring the words. “It’s all right for you to talk to me.”

The Evening and the Morning and the Night

The story is about the life of Lynn a girl who developed the Duryea Gode Disease (DGD) which her parents also suffered. One day her father killed her mother and killed himself. Moving up, Lynn tries to rebuild her life and goes to the college at the University of Southern California, where she decided to rent a house with other four friends who have the same disease. There, she is being called the "house mother" because she is the only one that tell to her roommates to keep the house clean and they obeyed. Living there, Lynn meets a guy named Alan who after a while she feels confident with. One day Alan asks her to go to visit him mom who is at Dilg. There, Alan tells his mom that him and Lynn are getting married.

Quotes

• "Biology School was a pain in the usual ways. I didn't eat in public anymore, didn't like the way people stared at my biscuits- cleverly dubbed "dog biscuits" in every school I'd ever attended. You'd think university students would be more creative. I didn;t like the way people edges away from me when they caught sight of my emblem".

• “Two men and three women. All we had in common was our disease, plus a weird combination of stubborn intensity about whatever we happened to be doing and hopeless cynicism about everything else".

• "Her name is Lynn Mortimer,” he said. “I’m…” He paused awkwardly. “She and I are going to be married."

The Book of Martha

The book of Martha is a story of a writer women who find herself with God. In the story God tells Martha to do something who will change the world as he said to the three biblical figures, Job, Jonah, and Noah. He says to her that she has to help the humankind to be less destructive and more peaceful. Martha solution is to give humans utopia dreams, where they get what they desire.

Quotes

• "Do you? What you see is up to you, Martha. Everything is up to you".

• "I want them to have the the only possible utopia".
• "Taking care of their kids should be the one thing that parents wants to do for real in spite of the dreams".

Amnesty

Amnesty is the story of a woman called Noah, and alien people that are living on Earth. Both have a relationship being almost symbiotic with humanity, and also goverment overreach. The protagonist is an alien abductee (as a young person). Aliens let her out. Her own people kidnap her and torture her for information. Noah works for peaceful coexistence.

Quotes

• "The Communities would have preferred her to be naked, and for the long years of her captivity, she had had no choice".
• "I want to vote for peace between your people and mine by telling the truth."
• "I will answer their questions and reassure them that they have nothing to fear. That's all I can do".

Secundary Sources

Isiah Lavender III's article "Digging Deep: Ailments of Difference in Octavia Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”.

Isiah Lavender in ¨Digging Deep¨ demonstrates how Octavia Butler in ¨The Evening, and the Morning and the Night¨ make the story as a race methaphor, because of using the Duryea-Gode Disease, Isiah is showing that those people who has this disease in the story are victims of cultural racism because of the way society treats them and make them be apart from others. The only different is that in Butler´s story emphasis in the disease and not skin color.

Quotes

• This story ostensibly concerns medical science. However, what if this story were also about race and the disease as a literalized metaphor race?" (Lavender, 65)
• Consequently, Butler does not have a biological model of race in mind for "The Evening and the Morning and the Night."With race "situated at the crossroads of identity and social structure", the disease "frames inequality", and "political processes operate" in creating new racisms where health matters (Winant ix)" (Lavender, 69).
• ¨..depicts people suffering with a hereditary disease who are forced to live apart from society in protective wards and are subject to discriminatory treatment because of a fearful populace influenced by the mass media¨.

Maria Holmgren Troy's "Loss of Words: Octavia Butler's 'Speech Sounds'."

In "Loss of Words" Troy is talking about "Speecch Sounds" and says that it is a fiction story but is not including technology as machines or spacecraft. She mentions that the technology that is talked about in this short story is the human comunication. Troy explains that as the short story is about an illness that people are not able to communicate with others or understand speech, this causes that people this cause violence in the society. However, there is a hope when the children at the end of the story appears who can understand and speak. Troy says that as they were born after de illness, both have the verbally and intelectually fuction that can change the world. Troy uses this story as a starting piece in her linguistics class.

Quotes

• "Rye is the protagonist and the story is limited to her point of view, although it is told in the third person" (Troy, 71).
• "The dystopia tone or emotion of "Speech Sounds" is unified up until the end of the story, which like many short stories has a twist or turnabout" (Troy, 75)
• "Moreover, the reference to Rye's "Sometimes useless memory" is oneon the traces in the story that indicates Butler has modeled the "illness" on symptoms of aphasia" (Troy, 76)

Sandra Y. Govan's "Disparate Spirits Yet Kindred Souls: Octavia E. Butler, 'Speech Sounds,' and Me."

This source is about how Govan divide in two parts two personal different stories. The first one tallks about the things in common that ishe and Butler have, and how their life experience are linked, and stregthened. The second part is where she put her attention to "Speech Sounds" which she says it is a story that she can identify herself with the protagonist. Govan surveys the whole story, the setting, the protagonist, the main topic, and the real life afliction that could cause speech.

Quotes

• "The relationship I had with Octavia Butler was neither complicated nor convoluted. Our friendship existed on both a professional and a personal plane" (Govan, 109).
• "Despite our early childhood traumas and thses mixed messages about our ability to suceed as writers, I learned from years of casual conversation that Octavia and I spent much of our childhood surrounded by compassioante adults, adutls who taught us imporant life lessons and made sure that books continued to be a part of our lives" (Govan, 111).
• "The lasting impact made by Butler's characters the vivid fully imagined diverse worlds she creates in help fiction, and the technical finesse of her work is fiction that, as woman, reader, teacher, and scholar speaks to me" (Govan, 125).

Claire P. Curtis” “Theorizing Fear: Octavia Butler and the Realist Utopia.”

Curtis focuses on "fear". Hobbes: law is what we seek to make us civilized in our natural state we (humans) are fear, self-interest (pride). Octavia Butler's solution, according to Curtis is feminist solution.

Quotes

• "Butler's understanding of realism accepts these human motivations and recognizes the potencial brutishness of human interaction under such condiction. But she also uses her female protagonists to show a way forward out of the continued violence" (Curtis, 413).
• Butler's realist utopianism rejects the strongly authoritarian state that usually follows from realist premises" (Cusrtis, 414).
• Butler explores the advantages of the satisfying dream-world primarily through the softening of the aggressiveness of those who desire the master or destroy others" (Curtis, 427).

Octavia Butler Biography

Octavia Butler was a black-American science fiction writer who was born in Pasadena, California. She was the only child of a housemaid who used to work with white people, and a shoeshine man. By growing up in a racial community, Butler had the experience of a racial segregation. At Butler’s early age, her shyness caused it difficult to share with other children.  . Her self-consciousness makes her think that she was unattractive, and ignorant which incited be an easy victim for bullies. This brought the consequence that she passed a lot of time reading stories, and there she started to feel interested in science fiction magazines, and stories. “Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of 13, when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel conveyed the realities of segregation in five words: "Honey ... Negroes can't be writers"’ (Wikipedia contributors).

Quotes

• "Even though Butler's mother wanted her to become a secretary with a steady income, Butler continued to work at a series of temporary jobs, preferring the kind of mindless work that would allow her to get up at two or three in the morning to write" (Wikipedia contributors).
• "As a freshman at PCC, she won a college-wide short story contest, earning her first income ($15) as a writer" (Wikipedia contributors).
• "In later interviews, Butler explained that the research and writing of the Parable novels had overwhelmed and depressed her, so she had shifted to composing something "lightweight" and "fun" instead" (Wikipedia contributors).