Octavia E. Butler Papers". oac.cdlib.org. Online Archives of California . Retrieved January 11, 2017. Melzer, Patricia, Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-292-71307-9.

Bradford, K. Tempest (July 10, 2014). "An 'Unexpected' Treat For Octavia E. Butler Fans". NPR . Retrieved October 15, 2021. What had she lost or gained, and why? And what else might be done? She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge.”Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship". carlbrandon.org. Carl Brandon Society. 2015 . Retrieved October 15, 2016. Octavia Butler profile and photos at the Huntington Library. She bequeathed her papers to the Huntington. Ayana Jamieson (June 22, 2017). "Mining the Archive of Octavia E. Butler" . Retrieved November 9, 2020. Eventually, the Oankali modify Lilith's memory so that she can more easily learn the Oankali language. They also modify her body chemistry so that she can open and close doors at will. They make these changes with Lilith's consent, though they tell her that if she does not consent they will surprise her with them. Lilith soon becomes the human with the most power aboard the Oankali ship. This power stems from the fact that she is the human with the most knowledge about their Oankali captors. This difference in power causes huge rifts between her and the humans that she is meant to train. Her knowledge makes her powerful and dangerous. It also makes her a target in the eyes of the dissenters, such as Curt. Agency

When Lilith is Awakened and starts living with and learning about the Oankali in turn, her knowledge acquisition is at a disadvantage. First, because Lilth's memory does not have the same capacity as Oankali memory and this puts her at a disadvantage when learning the Oankali language or learning to differentiate between Oankali individuals. More importantly, however, the Oankali will simply not provide an answer that they do not want Lilith to know. Some of this knowledge would give Lilith power the Oankali perceive as dangerous. For example, during her first meal at Jdhaya's house, Lilith asks whether human food can poison any Oankalis. Kahguyaht responds that vulnerable individuals—the elderly and the young—would respond negatively to certain human foods. Lilith asks which foods in particular, which angers Kahguyaht. It asks Lilith, "'Why do you ask, Lilith? What would you do if I told you? Poison a child?'" Lilith responds that she would never hurt a child to which Kahguyaht replies, "'You just haven't learned yet not to ask dangerous questions'" (48). The "dangerous knowledge" that Lilith would acquire in this situation would give her the power to decide whether a certain Oankali lives or dies; clearly, only the Oankali want to hold that power for themselves. To close the conversation, Kahguyaht tells Lilith, "'within reason, we want you to know us'" (48). Evidently, Lilith's "reasonable" knowledge of the Oankali does not include anything that augments her power. They intend to keep her (and the rest of humanity) subjugated, and therefore dependent on them. Calvin, Ritch. "An Octavia E. Butler Bibliography (1976–2008)", Utopian Studies 19.3 (2008): 485–516. JSTOR 20719922. Thus, without a true choice as to whether or not to breed with the Oankali, this kind of coercion can be defined as rape. For female humans in the novel, the threat of rape does not solely come from their Oankali captors. Literary analyst Meghan K. Riley writes: "rape is central, and apparently acceptable, in Dawn." Both men and women have to worry about being forced to submit to Oankali sexuality. Joseph, Lilith's lover, is actually induced to perform sexual activities with Nikanj without having verbally consented while they are all in the training room. However, human women also have to worry about the threat of rape at the hands of the human men. Lilith has to fight off Paul Titus who attempts to rape her after she turns down his sexual advances. Later, Leah is almost raped in the training room by her partner: "Leah's charge, a small blond man, grabbed her, hung on, and might have raped her if he had been bigger or she smaller" (171). In an environment where humanity has been denied consent at the hands of their extremely powerful alien captors, the human men lash out against human women, who are doubly under threat. Lilith's initial discomfort at realizing that her captors, who turn out to be an alien race called the Oankali, have performed surgery on her body without her consent speaks to an overarching theme of Dawn. Throughout Dawn, the humans aboard the Oankali ship are forced to submit to their captors' desires. The question of consent seems to be relatively straightforward: because the humans are captive, they have no choice but to submit to the Oankali's decisions. In other words, the humans have no consent, and therefore no bodily autonomy, in the Oankali world. In "Womb," Lilith realizes this truth when she learns the Oankali have changed her genetic code and begins to see the way the Oankali treat humans as similar to the way humans used to treat animals on Earth: "This was one more thing they had done to her body without her consent and supposedly for her own good. 'We used to treat animals that way,' she muttered bitterly" (31). Los Angeles Public Library opened the Octavia Lab, a do-it-yourself maker space and audiovisual space named in Butler's honor. [87]Starting in 1974, Butler worked on a series of novels that would later be collected as the Patternist series, which depicts the transformation of humanity into three genetic groups: the dominant Patternists, humans who have been bred with heightened telepathic powers and are bound to the Patternmaster via a psionic chain; their enemies the Clayarks, disease-mutated animal-like superhumans; and the Mutes, ordinary humans bonded to the Patternists. [25] George, Lynell (November 17, 2022). "The Visions of Octavia Butler". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved November 25, 2022. Holden, Rebecca J., "The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy". Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 72 (1998): 49–56. Ramirez, Catherine S. "Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler and Gloria Anzaldua", in Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth (eds), Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002: 374–402.

Scott Simon, " Essay on Racism: A Science-Fiction Writer Shares Her View of Intolerance", Weekend Edition Saturday. September 1, 2001 [Audio]. A World without Racism": "NPR Essay - UN Racism Conference", NPR Weekend Edition Saturday (September 1, 2001) Obviously, to everybody other than the Oankali, this stance is inherently problematic. Lilith is forced to carry a child which she did not consent to. Every human aboard the ship is forced to submit to ooloi sexual advances whether or not they consent. The Oankali's fantasy that they are offering their captives a choice is merely that—a fantasy. They are not as benevolent as they seem to think. a book review by Venetria K. Patton: Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements". www.nyjournalofbooks.com . Retrieved June 24, 2020. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author to be able to write full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public, and awards soon followed. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library in Southern California. [6] Early life [ edit ]Crossley, Robert. "Critical Essay." In Kindred, by Octavia Butler. Boston: Beacon, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8070-8369-7 City Lights Bookshop (2022). "Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1986". Commons Social Change Library. Pfeiffer, John R. "Butler, Octavia Estelle (b. 1947)", in Richard Bleiler (ed.), Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. 2nd edn. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. 147–158. Omry, Keren, "A Cyborg Performance: Gender and Genre in Octavia Butler". Phoebe: Journal of Gender and Cultural Critiques. 17.2 (2005 Fall): 45–60. Google featured her in a Google Doodle in the United States on June 22, 2018, which would have been Butler's 71st birthday. [84]

Butler’s novels are just that kind of fiction. The child who began writing as a means of escape, ended up crafting potent calls to socio-political action that seem ever more pertinent to our survival as a species.

Dawn

A new indie bookstore named for Octavia Butler is opening in the author's hometown". Literary Hub. January 3, 2023. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023 . Retrieved February 18, 2023. Hayward, Philip, ed. (2004). Off the Planet. John Libbey Publishing. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt2005s0z. ISBN 978-0-86196-938-8. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-03-30 00:49:12 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40418103 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier When humans own other humans, it is referred to as slavery. Lilith does not describe Oankali "ownership" of the humans as such, but she does allude to slavery in "The Training Floor." Lilith notes: "Now it was time for them to begin planting their own crops. And, perhaps, now it was time for the Oankali to begin to see what they would harvest in their human crop" (205). The use of the term "human crop" shows how distanced the Oankali are from the humans—they do not see them as equals and instead see them as experimental animals, as Lilith attests early in the novel.