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Research Assignment 1

Octavia Butler was born on June 22 1947 in Pasadena, California. She was the only child in her household. Her father died when she was seven and her upbringing was left to her mother and her grandmother who was a very strict baptist. She was witness to racial segregation and diversity from an early age by seeing her mother work. In school she always felt like an outcast either due to her crippling shyness and images with her self esteem or when she grew to be six feet tall making her a target of bullies. One thing she found peace in was reading the fairy tales from the library. This lead to her becoming enveloped in the world of science fiction. This new found love brought her to begging her mother for a typewriter. The catalyst to her writing career was seeing a bad movie on TV and she was convinced she could write a better story. After college she worked at mindless temp jobs that let her continue her writing. Her break happened in 1971 after meeting Samuel R. Delany who would publish her first two stories. After that she was in writing her patternist series in the early 70s to late 80s followed by her Xenogensis trilogy. In 1995 she became the first sci-fi author to win the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur award The last book she wrote was a vampire sci-fi story named Fledgling in 2005. The following year she died outside her home in Washington.

Octavia seems like a wonder woman to be around. Humbled by her hardships as socially awkward child and a caring yet stern figure that will tell you the hard truths but will always find a way to soften its blow. She seemed like a woman whose head was always teeming with idea and was able to keep her writing consistent as shown from her long running series of books something that is very difficult for any writer in my opinion. I imagine her success showed her that anyone can accomplish there goals despite the morals of the society they lived in and she would not dissuade anyone from trying to reach their goals.

Wikipedia contributors. "Octavia E. Butler." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 13 Sep. 2015. Web. 28 Sep. 2015.

Research Assignment 2

2.1)Lynn, E. “Vampires Aliens, and Dodos,”

• What being a human means
• Doro constantly trying to manipulate Anyawu
• Doro's plan to create a super race in his image

Doro's existence is obsessively dedicated to breeding a line of people with various psychic gifts, and for his people he is God. Anyanwu is forced to join the gene pool, to pass on her abilities of healing, shape-changing and great physical strength to Doro's people. I think this is important because it shows the whole dynamic of the relationship of Doro and Anyawu and how he sees himself as a walking god trying to breed the "perfect" race 2.2)Pfeiffer, “Octavia Estelle Butler (b. 1947),"

• How Butler ties in African-American history into her novels
• How she grounds her novels to our world by using historical settings
• Gender and Race power struggles

"Wild Seed is a combination of Butler's brilliant fable and real history" Butler adds reality to her stories. She explores slavery and its harsh truth and then adding a twist as incorporates supernatural beings. I chose this quote cause it shows one of the unique and brilliant things about Butler's writing style. She puts her novels in a period of history we are familiar with so we can relate it to other stories we heard of the time and in the back of our head associate them all together to that time period. 2.3) Bishop. M. “Wild Seed,”

• Doro is an evil 3.7 thousand year old immortal who steals the bodies of people to maintain life
• Anyawu is a 300 immortal who is a healer and referred to as the "Sun Woman". She is the good to Doro's evil
• The setting spans over centuries from 1690s in Nigeria to America in the 1800s
• Despite their relation to each other it is a love story over the course of centuries

“A love story, then, but one in which love is annihilated by betrayal, threat, and active cruelty, only to reassert itself, tentatively, in Anyanwu’s melancholy acceptance of Doro’s inhuman nature.” I chose this quote because it shows how bad the relationship between the two really is and how compatible they are. But as they say loves find a way even if we don't want it to.

Research assignment 4

L. Timmel Duchamp "Sun Woman" or "Wild Seed"

• The white protagonist
• Anyawu is the body and Doro is the soul
• Similarities between Leleynl l Absq and Anyanwu both healers and strong minded females
• Why Doro breeds

"Equating freedom with sovereignty, the Western tradition since Plato, argues Arendt, has held plurality to be a "weakness," at best an indication of our unfortunate dependence on others, which we should strive to overcome."

Rebecca J. Holden "Impact of Octavia Butler's Early Work"

• How Anyawu represents a cyborg
• The cyborg representation
• A white bourgeois focused of sovereign individualism
• How the struggle between Doro and Anyawu sounded like a cliche romantic subplot

"However, we must not overlook the role of choice in Anyanwu's insistence on the stability of her gender identity as well as what that gender identity means to her and presumably Butler" Anyanwu's character was not created accidentally,Butler wanted he to a strong black woman yet gentle a earthly. Anyanwu was able to transform into the most strongest being and then go back to a loving soft being.

Research Assignment 5

• Butler's introduction into writing
• Butler's Attraction to Sci-fi
• Butler's views on Comic books and how its viewed as the junk food of books
• Shifts in the themes and archetypes of comic books (From the silver age to the dark age)
• links between Butler's works and comics specifically the patternist series
• Butler's distaste for cut and dry good and evil characters
• The struggle for Dominance that is part of all life
• Butler's personal connection to Doro
• The dark nature of superheroes
• Non-supers in the world of comics damsels and derelicts
• Doro's breeding is a fake reliefs of western modernity

The only important elements in society are the artistic and the criminal because they alone can question society's values and change them. I think this is important cause it shows the driving forces that change society. A real world example of this would be Walter Cronkite's uncensored coverage of the Vietnam war. He showed the pictures of all the dead men and women the children dead and dying in the street that our troops caused. This led to wide spread anti war movements. This act that he did that can be seen as criminal and maybe even treasonist broke the mold of blind acceptance that we are just for going to war and showed what we are doing there is not just.

Wild Seed chapters 1-4

The story starts off with Doro an immortal man at the ruins of a village that once belonged to his people. Angered by the loss he wonders thinking of where the survivors might have been taken. However soon he notices his instincts are guiding him. His feelings bring him to a woman tending her garden. Her name is Anyanwu and she is an immortal like Doro. At first Doro stalks around her house watching her (however Anyanwu sensed him but didn't deem him a threat. Doro eventually approaches Anyanwu and ask her to come with him so they can have children. Doro then explains that he is immortal like Anyanwu but has to take a body to stay alive unlike her. Eventually he persuades her and they leave. Doro comes to a village where they will take canoes up the river but the new king does not want to listen to Doro. In response he takes the body of a slave child killing him and takes the body of the king. Further along they go to a slaver camp where Doro has business to do. They then meet Anyanwu grandson Okoye who is being sold as a slave. Doro demands his release and passaage on their ship. Okoye then learns that his grandmother and her new husband are immortals. They then meet Doro's son Issac who takes a "liking" Anyanwu and Doro says they will "share" her.

Wild Seed chapters 7-10

The chapter begins with Doro coming to see his children one of them is Issac. Him and Issac begin speaking about Anyanwu and the newest wild seeds who can feel each people emotions in burst, a power that is straining with a child in the house. They then begin to talk about Issac's relationship with Anyanwu and how now they get a long better then they did at first. Doro ask to see her and his daughter Nweke and Issac brings her to Doro they're conversation about Doro's plan breed a brother with his sister leads to Doro having "relations with his own daughter. The chapter ends with Nweke fainting. In the next chapter we learn that she fainted because she is transitioning into her next stage of powers which if successful is very powerful and very dangerous. Anyawu stays by her daughters side to help her threw this life threatening event. A flashback happens of when Doro introduced Anyawu to Thomas who she is forced to have a relationship with. Doro does this to show her how good she has it with him. The next chapter Doro reflects on his transformation when he was a child and how the wild seeds view Doro as someone to worship. At the end of the chapter Nweke completes her transformation however Issac is killed in the process. It is revealed in the next chapter that Nweke died as well leaving Anayawu in mourning.

Connections, Links, and Extended Networks: Patterns in Octavia Butler’s Science Fiction

The article is about the ebb and flow relationship of the characters in Octavia Butler's books. Every character has someone that is their opposite for every strong female they are paired with a strong male. Every Anyawu has a Doro to counter her however despite them being enemies they need each other and metaphorically feed off of each other to collect people and grow stronger. The bigger picture is the power struggle between these characters Doro wants to breed for his own purposes. He wants to keep his fridge fully stocked with people with psionic powers and in the long run he hopes for companionship. On the other hand Anyawu is his opposite she doesn't breed like Doro she nurtures like a loving mother and resist Doro's ideals. The struggle ends when Doro promises to change for the better so Anyawu won't kill herself

Homage to Tradition:Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel

This article is about Octavia Butler's impact on on the historical novel genre as well as the slave narrative and sci-fi. The choices she makes in writing her stories the characters the setting the events all draw from the 3 genres and help them stack on top of each other like a literature Lincoln log tower. Alone these pieces normally fall into the same troupes and cliches that make them not as interesting. However together they create something better something unique. Govan phrases it perfectly "Octavia Butler's work stands on the foundation oftraditional form and proceeds to renovate that form."(Govan 82)

Octavia Butler and the Science-Fiction Heroine

This article focuses more on Butler's impact on the science fiction genre. Before her it was a male dominated field. Not only the authors but the heroes they made as well, handsome and heroic men who are symbols of masculinity such as Flash Gordon(Flash Gordon) and Han Solo(Star Wars). Now enter Butler a black female science fiction author something unheard of until now. However her first novel does not stray to far away from the tried and true sci-fi plots it is her latter books that set the stage for modern sci-fi female protagonist such as Ellen Ripley(Alien) and Princess Leia( Star Wars). The female characters she made such as Anyawu aren't the cliche damsels in distress who need a night in shining armor to do every action for her. They are strong people who can chose their own path and who they want to be. These men and women constructed by Butler also break another mold the racial one. They take actions that are normally done by the white antagonist instead of being the submissive side characters. It isn't Karl Larkin that kills Doro it is Mary who is black.

Citation Practice

Octavia Butler was shy as a child.

journal entry 1

Today we learned how to cite and edit on Wikipedia. We also learned the basics of what the class will be about. So far it seems more interesting then the last English class I had did which was just short stories and small plays. I also learned the number of people who have a Wikipedia account which to me is interesting since I like learning about random facts and statistics. So far this class seems more engaging then the other ones I have taken so far

Journal entry 3

I thought today would be a lot harder then I expected but the group work was pretty easy maybe it is because I am working with someone that I worked with last week so I am use the way he works and how the way I work, works with his

journal entry 4

Today was easy for me I feel confident that I summarize well and don't waste keystrokes on useless information and on top of that we got to take information and then just dump it into a list which is basically a hobby for me.

Journal Entry 5

Today was a lot of reading my eyes actually feel strained from it but that might be because of the screen. I feel like my summaries are good albeit short in some places. Finding everything wasn't that hard but I had to make the citations which is always difficult for me.

Journal Entry 6

I didn't really do anything today I did half of this weeks work last week and forgot to do this weeks research assignment for Monday

Journal Entry 7

Today was a long day with a lot of talking and a lot of reading this is the first class where I feel exhausted I just want to go sleep

Journal Entry 8

Today was a rough day I had to explain feminist theory relate it to wild seed then I learned I need to do it with quotes so I'm glad I am off till next monday

Journal entry 9

The first part of the class was easy I just finished what I did last week but they second part ruined me I have a hard time making my thesis or anything creative I'm more of a taking orders kind of student

Journal entry 10

Today was kind of tough with people deleting the group work and working on the essay

Orson Scott Card on Butler's Craft in Wild Seed

• Each character has one title (Doro = Doro)
• Not flooded with unimportant characters
• Reader Progresses with the viewpoint character
• Builds an interesting universe with it's own jargon
• Details given in well executed fashion
• Well done implications and use of readers prior knowledge
• Drops hints and details to urge the reader forward
• Intentionally leaves plot holes
• Detailed but concise exposition
• Character traits clearly shown and expressed to prevent vagueness