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Octavia Butler was shy as a child.

Bloodchild

Summary

In Butler's story of bloodchild many things seem to go on. Butler is a child living with her mother and her siblings, she has brothers and sisters there is also another individual living with her family helping them out named T'Gatoi that her mother has apparently known since they were young. T'gatoi is the person who introduced butler's mother with her significant other in other words her father. Butler's mother seems to be much younger than T'gatoi but her physical condition seems to be much worse apparently due to the fact that she does not consume something called "egg" that can help her live longer, etc. Later on a male approaches where butler lives which they refer to is called the " preserve " and T'gatoi makes butler go injure the man where then she brings him into the house and starts cutting him with her " claws " this is one point in the story which makes me question whether they are humans or not. Butler is horrified at the scene she is seeing and has to go puke outside. I found this chapter very weird in a way there are a lot of things going on that you don't necessarily know what exactly is going on, during this chapter the family is talking about people having worms in there body and drinking eggs, butler is supposed to be a host which we find out near the end of the story. In general the scene is gruesome and to butler's family everything seems quite normal but to her she is in disgust and cant stand what's going on, she does not support the actions that are currently going on. In butler's " Afterword " of the story she explains that this story is not about slavery and other things she says that she wrote a story about a man being pregnant in this chapter and how she's making a different kind of story.

Quotes

" placed a claw against his abdomen.... "

" helping her consume him.... "

Speech Sounds

Summary

In this short story there was a girl named Rye which was going to travel across the city to get to a place called "Pasadena" which is where she wanted to travel to in order to visit a friend. while she is on her way to Pasadena she is traveling there on a bus which is packed with people and she is sitting, rye then notices two individuals continuously arguing and she senses sooner or later some type of altercation will outburst. Rye is still on the bus she is about half way to her destination and a fight out breaks between the two individuals one was a short male while the other was a tall male and the short male hit the tall male and he started bleeding , while this was going on a third guy got into the fight and it became a type of brawl in the bus, rye then was looking over to the bus driver and could tell he was going to hit the breaks hard so she prepared herself for the bus to brake and once that happened everybody started falling on top of each other which resulted in more arguing. Once the bus stopped rye quickly got out and was observing the situation , a car pulled up and a man got out she wasn't sure who the man was but he did have a gun, and possibly was a cop, the man then threw gas into the bus which then resulted into everybody evacuating the bus and he had rye helping individuals out. After the whole incident rye found her self in the mans car, the whole situation is strange because rye continues to mention some sort of disease and she is not talking with the man just making gestures. Later on they stop somewhere empty and start having sex when they are finished rye wants to him to go with her but isn't sure the man accepts. While rye was driving with the man they run into a male chasing a female with a knife they stopped the car and both got out the man that was chasing the girl stabbed her and then the "cop" which was with rye shot him they went to check up on them and the "cop" was looking at the male he shot and went to look at his body but he was still alive and took the cops gun and killed him and then rye killed the man. Two children were there and rye did not want them at first but then she heard them speak which then she had hope in life and took them to care for them.

Quotes

" Feeling little hope "

" The illness had stripped her "

" My hope had come back "

The Evening and the Morning and the Night

Summary

This short story very much relates to the other short story " Speech Sounds " because what goes on in this story is very similar to " Speech Sounds " in many ways for example this short story was about a girl named lynn which lost her parents to a disease and close ones to it too, lynn then adventures off to college and starts interacting with other individuals. While lynn is in college she dorms with a few more girls which are not necessarily " good girls " as lynn is because they don't really do chores and other things so lynn then tells them to start doing certain things in the dorm and they comply. Overall the kids in her school accept lynn for who she is because it turns out that she has the disease too. After a while her colleagues noticed that she has a specific odor to her which lynn did not realize because obviously she is used to her scent so she can't tell but it makes sense to her because of the disease she has. Lynn met a girl named Beatrice which she did not like at first but eventually they became close friends because they realized that they have a lot of similarities. Towards the end of the story Beatrice tells Lynn that she is trying to find her a job. This story was very similar to speech sounds because both individuals had a disease and lost people which were close to them, at the beginning in this story lynn had very little hope but then she regained it towards the end which also happened in the " speech sounds " story.

Quotes

" We have a special gift? "

" it's a pheromone "

" I can't say how I'll act when we get there "

Butler's Biography

Octavia Butler was born on June 22 1947 and died on February 24 2006.Butler was an author of the science fiction genre, she was born in pasadena,california. Butler was raised by her mother and her grandmother in a time where racism was going on so butler did not have the same opportunities as some of the other kids specifically whites which was looked at as the "dominant" race and blacks were looked at as the "inferior" race, which equated into butler not having the type of schooling and treatment that the whites had. Octavia did end up attending school but at first she was in a way anti social simply because she was shy in her early years. Butler's mother would bring home literature works that white families where she worked at would throw away, butler would read the pieces of literature that her mother would bring home which would consist of books,magazines, etc. Butler's mother bought her a type writer machine where butler would write numerous different stories, she was one of the first black female writers and was told that she would not be successful but butler did not give up her dreams, she continued to write. Eventually Butler graduated from college and her mother wanted butler to get a steady job, butler had different interests she wanted to follow her passion which was writing. Butler attending a workshop where she presented some of her works of literature and it caught another writers eye named Harlan Ellison who then persuaded butler to go another workshop which butler did. Butler finally then started selling her novels and it became a hit she continued creating science fiction stories that were selling which led to making her a successful black female writer.

The Book Of Martha

Summary

This short story had a lot to do with religion and Martha questioning " god " in the story Martha is in some sort of way speaking to god more than likely in her thoughts but she in her view she is speaking to a god of her own imagination not the god from the bible because certain things that she is speaking with god in some sort of way go against how the bible portrays god to be. In the story for example Martha asks god if he knows everything and he answers her saying " no..... you can't imagine how boring it was " basically in a way portraying that the god that the bible speaks about which knows and controls everything about the world isn't what she Is perceiving in her eyes god is totally different. Martha in the story is also kidnapped and eventually for some odd reason she starts viewing her kidnapper as a normal harmless person. Towards the end of the story god gives Martha a choice of weather she wants to come back to the world as a type of person she views as the worst in a way basically coming to the world as what she may determine is the worst possible scenario and it's up to her if she decides to do that.

Quotes

" No, I outgrew that trick long ago, you can't imagine how boring it was "

" Don't you know everything? "

" God "

Amnesty

Summary

In this short story is about a young girl named noah who was kidnapped at a young age by some sort of advanced species in other words can be considered as aliens. Noah was later on released by these " aliens " and the united states government took noah for questioning, they kept noah for years trying to beat information out of her as to what happened to her etc. Eventually noah gets out and starts cooperating with the " aliens " where she then would get humans just like her for the aliens to operate experiments on them which did not hurt the humans. Noah gets six humans for the aliens and at time these humans are scared, angry, etc. The humans feel all types of emotions while the aliens perform there experiments on them and noah reassures them that if they want to live they must comply with the aliens, there testing, and what other needs the aliens have from the humans. The humans would comply with the " aliens " to whatever they wanted to do simply because they wanted to live, the humans did not resist what the aliens did because they were petrified as to what might happen to them if they decided to go against there rules.

Quotes

" You're on your own "

" She was hit "

" Organisms of manipulation "

The Power Of Words

This short story emphasizes how powerful literacy truly is Troy, Maria Holmgren. "Loss of Words: Octavia Butler's 'Speech Sounds'." The Power of Words. Ed. Solveig Granath, June Miliander, and Elizabeth Wennö. Karlstad, Sweden: Karlstads Universitet, 2005. 73-80.   I will agree with this context because it supports my thesis about the story about demonstrating how powerful literacy is because without it there would be a lot of misunderstandings which this source agree's with

Quotes

" Lack of verbal communication and its relation to violence and social disorder. "

Importance Of The English language

This article talks about how important language is due to the fact that language is how us humans and even other living species such as animals communicate. the article is stressing the importance of language by giving some examples of how we humans communicate in many other ways such as simple things like sounds or even hand movement, etc. Using language is how we learn from one another and express our ideas and feelings/emotions to one another, even take a dog for an example which is a animal, a dog when about to bite more then likely growls at an individual warning that it will bite, and that is a type of communication of a dog , a form of language that otherwise if the dog didn't give that warning off then the individual would get bitten.

Quotes

" English language is one tool to establish our viewpoint "

Why Talk Is Important In Classrooms

This article is explaining on why interacting in a classroom with language is important. Now you may ask yourself so why is speaking in the classroom important? well according to this article speaking inside a classroom helps you first off practice your speaking skills which therefore allows you to be more proficient at speaking a language which in turn helps you communicate with more individuals. The importance of speaking according to this article is because it leaves you with higher opportunities because one will be able to communicate with others in different situations. This may open more job opportunities or various others simply because you will be gaining more knowledge with interacting with language which is how all humans communicate with one another.

Quotes

" Oral language is the foundation of literacy "

Sources

Sturgis, Susanna. "Octavia E. Butler: June 22, 1947-February 24, 2006.(Obituary)." The Women's Review of Books 23.3 (2006): 19. Web.

"Butler, Octavia 1947–2006." Black Literature Criticism: Classic and Emerging Authors since 1950. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 244-258.

Pfeiffer, John R. "Butler, Octavia Estelle (b. 1947)." Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Richard Bleiler. 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. 147-158

Becker, Jennifer. "Octavia Estelle Butler." Voices From the Gaps. Ed. Lauren Curtright. University of Minnesota, 21 Aug. 2004