Helpful Score: 1
Octavia Butler is one of the greatest sci-fi/fantasy writers of our time and this book is one of her best. Like all great sci-fi, this book can be read on two levels and both are equally engaging. The first is the surface, narrative level. The trials and tribulations of Dana, an African American woman living in the mid-70s, who suddenly finds herself being transported back to the 1800s to a slave plantation are riveting from the first page. I found myself staying up into the wee hours of the morning reading this because I just had to know what happened to Dana and the other characters.
The second level is that of metaphor; it's a response to the more militant attitudes in the African American community at the time this book was written. It wasn't uncommon to hear people condemning those who didn't try to escape slavery as weak and "house slaves" or slaves who had sexual relations (voluntarily, or as close as one could get to it as a slave) as traitors. Butler uses Dana's journeys into the past as a way to explore how the oppressive social systems of the time work on people's minds. Even someone like Dana, who grew up in the comparatively more free and liberated 60s and 70s can feel changes in herself, in spite of her best efforts to fight against it. The result is a much more compassionate view of slaves as complicated people with sometimes conflicting feelings and impulses trying to get by the best they can within a horribly oppressive social structure.
Such a message could seem heavy handed coming from a lesser writer, but Butler never lets the message overwhelm the characters and the story. I highly recommend this book!
The second level is that of metaphor; it's a response to the more militant attitudes in the African American community at the time this book was written. It wasn't uncommon to hear people condemning those who didn't try to escape slavery as weak and "house slaves" or slaves who had sexual relations (voluntarily, or as close as one could get to it as a slave) as traitors. Butler uses Dana's journeys into the past as a way to explore how the oppressive social systems of the time work on people's minds. Even someone like Dana, who grew up in the comparatively more free and liberated 60s and 70s can feel changes in herself, in spite of her best efforts to fight against it. The result is a much more compassionate view of slaves as complicated people with sometimes conflicting feelings and impulses trying to get by the best they can within a horribly oppressive social structure.
Such a message could seem heavy handed coming from a lesser writer, but Butler never lets the message overwhelm the characters and the story. I highly recommend this book!
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