Thank you for the list! (I could have gone and checked the book for myself!) And thank you for the post, because I've enjoyed reading the comments.
Any one of the chapters would be the basis of an entire career's worth of books for any other writer.
Also something that was said in my reading group!
I've only read the first Parable book - since it ended on a slightly hopeful note, I couldn't bear to see that ripped away. I think I need to be in a very strong place to read Octavia Butler, and I just haven't been there for a while, because she is such a powerful writer. I have read the Xenogenesis trilogy, but not re-read it. There was lots in that about re-building society, attempts to manage the re-building, and rebellion and so on. (My copy of the first book in the trilogy has the classic illustration of Lilith as a blue-eyed, willowy blonde.)
I ended up picking up an Anne McCaffrey or two this week, and have been noting how much and how often she infantilizes her female characters, with a side note as to wondering whether it's worth counting the ratio of male to female children produced by her major characters in her excessively patriarchal Pern, contrasted with Bujold, who does something similar, but explains it explicitly, and also creates the Koudelka family as a response. I think that Le Guin and/or Butler could be a good antidote.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-02-01 05:51 pm (UTC)Any one of the chapters would be the basis of an entire career's worth of books for any other writer.
Also something that was said in my reading group!
I've only read the first Parable book - since it ended on a slightly hopeful note, I couldn't bear to see that ripped away. I think I need to be in a very strong place to read Octavia Butler, and I just haven't been there for a while, because she is such a powerful writer.
I have read the Xenogenesis trilogy, but not re-read it. There was lots in that about re-building society, attempts to manage the re-building, and rebellion and so on. (My copy of the first book in the trilogy has the classic illustration of Lilith as a blue-eyed, willowy blonde.)
I ended up picking up an Anne McCaffrey or two this week, and have been noting how much and how often she infantilizes her female characters, with a side note as to wondering whether it's worth counting the ratio of male to female children produced by her major characters in her excessively patriarchal Pern, contrasted with Bujold, who does something similar, but explains it explicitly, and also creates the Koudelka family as a response. I think that Le Guin and/or Butler could be a good antidote.