THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK TO OCTAVIA E. BUTLER In memoriam Dr. Gregory Jerome Hampton 6 November 1968 – 29 November 2019 All that he touched, he changed. THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK TO OCTAVIA E. BUTLER Edited by Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker and contributors, 2020 Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xxi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Terry Woodley Cover image © John Jude Palencar All rights reserved. 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To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. CONTENTS List of iLLustrations viii Contributors ix foreword xiv aCknowLedgments xxi Introduction 1 Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker PART ONE: DAWN 1 What Octavia E. Butler Feared Most about Human Nature 11 Steven Barnes 2 “I want to live forever and breed people!”: The Legacy of a Fantasy 15 Heather Thaxter 3 Interpreting Disability Metaphor and Race in Octavia E. Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” 35 Sami Schalk 4 Problematizing Consent in the Posthuman Era: Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild” and “Amnesty” 55 Joe Heidenescher vi CONTENTS PART TWO: ADULTHOOD RITES 5 “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking”: Tracing Vampirism in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy 73 Kendra R. Parker 6 Becoming Posthuman: The Sexualized, Racialized, and Naturalized Others of Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood 95 Kitty Dunkley 7 Teaching the “Other” of Colonialism: The Mimic (Wo)Men of Xenogenesis 117 Aparajita Nanda 8 Octavia E. Butler’s Discourse on Colonialism and Identity: Dis/eased Identity in “Bloodchild,” Dawn, and Survivor 133 Gregory Jerome Hampton PART THREE: IMAGO 9 Visualizing Dana and Transhistorical Time Travel on the Covers of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred 151 Christine Montgomery and Ellen C. Caldwell 10 Apocalypse, Afrofutures, and Theories of “the Living” beyond Human Rights: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable Series 181 Chriss Sneed 11 Trauma, Technology, and the Trickster: Reading Octavia E. Butler’s Unfinished Trilogy 201 Ji Hyun Lee 12 The Pregnant Man Story: Echoes of Octavia E. Butler’s Themes of Reproductive Anxiety in Fan Writing 221 Heather Osborne 13 A Space for Discomfort: Octavia E. Butler and the Pedagogy of the Taboo 239 Aryn Bartley CONTENTS vii 14 Finding the Superhero in Damian Duffy’s and John Jennings’s Graphic Novel Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Science-Fiction-Postmodern-Slave-Narrative, Kindred 259 Forrest Yerman afterword 274 Tananarive Due index 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 9.1 First edition of Kindred (1979, Doubleday, hardback). Cover art by Larry Schwinger; Custom font by Elizabeth Levine 153 9.2 First paperback edition of Kindred (1981, Pocket Books) 158 9.3 First release under Beacon’s new paperback line Bluestreak (1998, Bluestreak, an imprint of Beacon Press). Cover design: Stark Design; Cover photography: Jana Leon; Model: Chastity Jackson 161 9.4 Two slightly varied versions of Kindred, twenty-fifth anniversary paperback (2004, Bluestreak, an imprint of Beacon Press). Cover design: Isaac Tobin; Cover art: Jana Leon; Model: Chastity Jackson 163 9.5 (2003, Beacon Press with new Reader’s Guide, paperback). Cover design and photo illustration: Bob Kosturko; Cover art: Corbis (image of woman) and Library of Congress (image of slave quarter) 167 9.6 (2018, Headline Book Publishing, paperback). Designs and illustrations: Yeti Lambregts 171 CONTRIBUTORS Steven Barnes is a New York Times best-selling author who has written more than thirty science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. He is also a pioneering science fiction television writer. His “Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer Limits won an Emmy for star Amanda Plummer. The NAACP Image Award winner also has written for “The New Twilight Zone,” “StarGate SG-1,” and “Andromeda.” Octavia E. Butler called Barnes’s Endeavor Award- winning novel Lion’s Blood “imaginative, well researched, well written, and devastating.” He has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Cable Ace awards. Barnes has lectured at UCLA, Mensa, Pasadena JPL, taught at Seattle University, hosted the “Hour 25” radio show on KPFK, been Kung Fu columnist for Black Belt magazine, been a “Starred Speaker” at the L.A. Screenwriting Expo, and profiled in countless magazines, newspapers, radio shows, and webzines. Aryn Bartley teaches literature and writing at Lane Community College, where she is also the Faculty Professional Development Coordinator. She has published on human rights narratives, witnessing, and pedagogy. Her current interests include the above topics along with feminist speculative fiction and the health humanities. Ellen C. Caldwell is an art historian, writer, and professor at Mt. San Antonio College. She completed her master’s at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis on contemporary West African art and visual culture. For the past decade, she has researched and written about visual artist Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers), who explores colonial pasts