Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler's Work

Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler's Work PDF Author: Martin Japtok
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030466256
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Human Contradictions in Octavia Butler’s Work continues the critical discussions of Butler’s work by offering a variety of theoretical perspectives and approaches to Butler’s text. This collection contains original essays that engage Butler’s series (Seed to Harvest, Xenogenesis, Parables), her stand-alone novels (Kindred and Fledgling), and her short stories. The essays explore new facets of Butler’s work and its relevance to philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, ethnic studies, women’s studies, religious studies, American studies, and U.S. history. The volume establishes new ways of reading this seminal figure in African American literature, science fiction, feminism, and popular culture.

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler PDF Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476647461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Slow to rise in the literary world, Octavia Estelle Butler cultivated musings on earth's future, reaching massive critical acclaim in the process. This companion will complement book club discussions and classroom lessons for the closest possible readings of Butler's science fiction and her texts on racism and pollution. A maven of speculative fiction so prescient that it hovers between tocsin and prophecy, Butler survives through her print stories, essays, novels and musings on individualism and compromise. This book guides the reader on a variety of Butler pieces, from her most obscure titles to her historical entries and pieces that speculate upon science, metaphysics, linguistics, psychology, writing and religion. The text serves as a guide through the depths of Octavia Butler's works and reinforces the reasons for which her name so often appears on reading lists for higher learning.

The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945

The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945 PDF Author: Sherryl Vint
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009180061
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Provides an overview of ways that utopian thinking has shaped American culture, focusing on the need to remake imperial USA.

The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Novel and Politics

The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Novel and Politics PDF Author: Bryan M. Santin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009034561
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Surveying the relationship between American politics and the twentieth-century novel, this volume analyzes how political movements, ideas, and events shaped the American novel. It also shows how those political phenomena were shaped in turn by long-form prose fiction.

The Gothic and Twenty-First-Century American Popular Culture

The Gothic and Twenty-First-Century American Popular Culture PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004698329
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Gothic and Twenty-First-Century American Popular Culture examines the gothic mode deployed in a variety of texts that touch upon inherently US American themes, demonstrating its versatility and ubiquity across genres and popular media. The volume is divided into four main thematic sections, spanning representations related to ethnic minorities, bodily monstrosity, environmental anxieties, and haunted technology. The chapters explore both overtly gothic texts and pop culture artifacts that, despite not being widely considered strictly so, rely on gothic strategies and narrative devices.

The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 2 Volumes

The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 2 Volumes PDF Author: Patrick O'Donnell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119431719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1607

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Book Description
Fresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discussing central and cutting-edge topics in American fiction studies Focused, critical explorations of authors and subjects of critical importance to American fiction Topics that reflect the energies and tendencies of contemporary American fiction from the forty years between 1980 and 2020 The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020 is a must-have resource for undergraduate and graduate students of American literature, English, creative writing, and fiction studies. It will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars seeking an authoritative array of contributions on both established and newer authors of contemporary fiction.

Dawn

Dawn PDF Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781538753712
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
One woman is called upon to rebuild the future of humankind after a nuclear war, in this revelatory post-apocalyptic tale from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali - a seemingly benevolent alien race -- intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth -- but salvation comes at a price. Hopeful and thought-provoking, this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.

Kindred

Kindred PDF Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807083704
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. “I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present. Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times). “Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.” —N. K. Jemisin Developed for television by writer/executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), executive producers also include Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields (The Americans, The Patient), and Darren Aronofsky (The Whale). Janicza Bravo (Zola) is director and an executive producer of the pilot. Kindred stars Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, and Gayle Rankin.

Alien Constructions

Alien Constructions PDF Author: Patricia Melzer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778465
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
“An incisive critical work” that looks at Octavia Butler’s writing, the movies of the Matrix and Alien series—and more—through a feminist lens (Femspec). Feminist thinkers and writers are increasingly recognizing science fiction’s potential to shatter patriarchal and heterosexual norms, while the creators of science fiction are bringing new depth and complexity to the genre by engaging with feminist thewories and politics. This book maps the intersection of feminism and science fiction through close readings of science fiction literature by Octavia E. Butler, Richard Calder, and Melissa Scott and the movies The Matrix and the Alien series. Patricia Melzer analyzes how these authors and films represent debates and concepts in three areas of feminist thought: identity and difference, feminist critiques of science and technology, and the relationship among gender identity, body, and desire, including the new gender politics of queer desires, transgender, and intersexed bodies and identities. She demonstrates that key political elements shape these debates, including global capitalism and exploitative class relations within a growing international system; the impact of computer, industrial, and medical technologies on women’s lives and reproductive rights; and posthuman embodiment as expressed through biotechnologies, the body/machine interface, and the commodification of desire. Melzer’s investigation makes it clear that feminist writings and readings of science fiction are part of a feminist critique of existing power relations—and that the alien constructions (cyborgs, clones, androids, aliens, and hybrids) that populate postmodern science fiction are as potentially empowering as they are threatening.

Fledgling

Fledgling PDF Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1583228047
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Fledgling, Octavia Butler’s last novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted—and still wants—to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.