Anytime anyone asks for science fiction recommendations, I'm always sure to tell them about Octavia Butler. Winner of numerous awards, Butler was the first black woman to make a name for herself in this notoriously male-dominated genre. Her books explore issues of race and gender and the ways they intersect in the experiences of women of color. Perhaps best known for her masterpiece of time travel, Kindred, she has also written two major series, Patternamsters and the Xenogenesis series.

The Xenogenesis series starts with the book Dawn, and includes the novels Adulthood Rites and Imago. In Dawn, Lilith Ayapo had just lost her husband and daughter when the earth is destroyed in a nuclear war. She wakes up two hundred years later on an alien ship that is orbiting the now lifeless planet Earth. Just as the bombs were dropping, the aliens transported thousands of humans to their ship to save humanity from extinction, and to repopulate the Earth once it is safe to do so. But the aliens aren't just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts (or whatever organ stands for goodness in their culture). The race of aliens that has saved the humans survives by traveling the stars, interacting with other species, and taking some of their genetic traits into themselves. Basically, they mean to procreate with humans to capture their genetic material, and the reward is the continuation of the human species. As you can imagine, this does not sit well with many of the humans, who see the aliens as their jailers, not their saviors.

Superior alien technology means that while the aliens try to get consent, they can basically take what they want, so humanity's resistance is pretty futile. Adulthood Rites and Imago take the story from the ship down to Earth, and through at least two generations of both humans and aliens. The story explores the idea that humanity has two fatal flaws that will always cause violence and destruction; intelligence and a desire for hierarchy. Because humans believe in hierarchy, they will always try to assert dominance. Because they are intelligent, their attempts to dominate each other can be incredibly destructive. The novels also explore the idea that humans feel threatened by anyone who does not resemble themselves, which in this case leads to some memorable conflicts with the aliens, but is also a symbol for the way humans have used everything from the shape of someone's eyes to skin color as an excuse to "other" people who are different than them. This "othering" allows humans to justify their domination, repression, and genocide against each other.

Unlike some of Butler's books, the message behind this story is pretty clearly stated by the aliens as they strive to teach the humans how to overcome their violent natures. There are plenty of examples of this human flaw, from when Lilith fights against her alien captors on the ship to the so-called resistors on Earth who try to escape the influence of the aliens. The human tendency for violence is starkly contrasted against the alien culture, who do everything in their power to avoid violence, and who are constantly at a loss for why humans would do so much that undermined their own existence.

The aliens are not perfect, though. While they are a less-violent people, they do have their own caste system. There are three basic types of aliens, and each has its own specific role in their society. To some extent, these roles are in fact defined by their biology-the three types of alien are different in form and function. But any deviation from those roles is met with disapproval and sadness on the part of the others, and extreme cases of dissatisfaction with one's purpose in life are dealt with through exile back on the ship.

Butler's creation of the alien race is unlike anything I'd read before. So often, aliens in science fiction are portrayed as inhuman monsters, or they are created in a human's image. These aliens felt just that-alien. Their cool assessment of human nature is something that is hard to deny, given our millennia of history and their almost incessant wars. Once again, Butler has shown us something about ourselves that is discomforting at best, and monstrous at worst, but that we must confront if we ever hope to move past the divisiveness of racism, classism, sexism, etc...that has defined our societies thus far.

God Help the Child, Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison writes with a voice like no other. Her novels dig deep into the human soul, and no one writes about trauma and scars and how they make us who we are better than her. I have always been deeply affected by her books, but since the advent of #blacklivesmatter and my own burgeoning understanding of how perniciously deep the roots of white supremacy go, I am beginning to see her work through a new lens. Race and its effect on her characters have always played a big role in her books, and God Help the Child is possibly one of the best examples of her ability to uncover difficult truths around race and the impact of white supremacy.

God Help the Child, like many of Morrison's books, is not a straight-forward linear narrative, though unlike some of her other books the timeline in the novel is essentially in chronological order. The main character is a woman named Bride, though throughout the book there are chapters told from the perspective of other female characters, as well. Bride's mother, her best friend, a paroled convict, a little girl...Every female character in the novel, with one exception, tells her own truth in her own words. Bride is a black woman; blue-black, in fact. This trait affects her entire life, from her birth, to her career decisions, to her relationships. Over the course of the novel, bits and pieces of Bride's life, and the other characters' opinions about or contributions to it, are doled out a morsel at a time-occasionally sweet, often bitter, sometimes both. Bride has a secret in her past, one that culminates in the complete dissolution of everything that she'd worked to become.

There is so much to dive into here. I'm certain if I read it again I would pick up on even more depth and meaning. But here are a few things that stood out to me. First, Morrison once again plays with narrative structure in a way that suits her purpose if not the conventions of writing fiction. The first part of the novel is all told as alternating voices from most of the female characters in the book. Those chapters are like puzzle pieces-the whole picture doesn't emerge without the inclusion of each person's individual thoughts, experiences, and emotions. The second half of the novel switches to third person, and I think it's telling that the first thing she writes about in this less personal voice is the one male character in the book, named Booker. We learn a lot about Booker, as she details his life from childhood through the present, and we can begin to see how his own experiences led to his later actions.

Another thing that stood out to me was the way that Morrison highlighted how our experiences as children can come to define us, and affect us in ways that we don't always recognize until much later in life. Our childhood selves can become a weight that we drag around with us, holding us back from meaningful relationships or self-awareness. Bride's mother, Booker, Bride's best friend, and Bride herself are all trying, in one way or another, to cover their emotional scars-with work, avoidance, reinvention, rationalization-but ultimately each must confront their own responsibility,  not for the things that happened to them, but to the way in which they either hold on to or let go of the burden.

There is also a lot in the book about power-who has it, where it comes from, why people want it, etc...Not always power in the traditional sense, though that is certainly there, but the power that comes from self-efficacy and self-determination. This is most obviously seen with Bride, though there are glimpses of it with other characters as well. As Bride starts to lose her sense of herself, her body goes through a literal transformation, bringing in the magical realism that Morrison is known for from novels like Beloved. As she loses and gains her power, we see her start to revert back to the too-black little girl named Lula Ann that she thought she had left behind when she reinvented herself as Bride, and then regain her physical maturity as she confronts the burdens of her own past.

I listened to the audiobook on this one, partly because I am avoiding the news on my daily commute right now because I can't stand to hear one more horrible, cruel, buffoonish thing the current resident of the White House says, but mostly because Toni Morrison herself narrated it. What a treat, to hear her voice reading her words. I could listen to her read from her works all day long. Overall, I think this is one of her most accessible books, and one that compares with some of the best from her early career.

Small, Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Oh, Jodi Picoult! The author of "women's" fiction that some love to hate. Prolific, issues-driven, and earnest, every Picoult novel is a small exploration of some aspect of society, often with a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. Her emphasis on family, relationships, and feelings has been used by some supposedly "serious" authors to imply that what she writes is not "true literature". I think those literary snobs should take a long walk off a short pier, but it doesn't mean they don't have a point. Picoult makes sincere attempts to represent all sides of a topic, in ways that are thought-provoking and meant to encourage understanding and growth. Often those attempts work (My Sister's Keeper, Salem Falls, Plain Truth), and sometimes, well...

Small, Great Things is Picoult's BOOK ABOUT RACISM.  Just like she has books about SEXUAL ASSAULT and RELIGION and MOTHERHOOD and SCHOOL SHOOTINGS. Small, Great Things is about a black OB nurse who is caring for the newborn of a white supremacist couple, who promptly insist that she not ever touch their son again. When the infant has a medical emergency while she is alone in the room with him, she hesitates to provide the life-saving care, and the boy dies. The white supremacists promptly demand her arrest, and legal mayhem ensues. The book is told from the alternating perspectives of the nurse, her white lawyer, and the white supremacist dad. I found all of them problematic as characters.

I'm going to just come clean now and say I did not finish the book. I got not quite half-way through and had to put it down. I also want to say up front that I appreciate what Picoult was trying to do by offering this story, and I was glad to see from the afterword that the book is well-researched, as are all of her books. But research is not a substitute for actual experiential knowledge and relationships, and it seems like Picoult could have benefitted from both before writing the novel. Her main character, Ruth, is a black woman who has done everything "right" to try to fit into "white" society. She doesn't see it that way, of course. She worked hard, got a good education, is always professional, and tries not to make waves in her predominately white workplace. Her sister, portrayed as the stereotypical "angry black woman", thinks she's a sell-out, and appears to be proven correct when Ruth's white employers and colleagues throw her under the bus once she is charged. But the way both she and her sister are portrayed leads me to believe that maybe Picoult doesn't actually know any black women, at least not well enough to realize how stereotypical her characters really are. Neither one of them felt authentic to me; they felt like shallow caricatures of real people. This is often a problem when an author tries to make one character represent an entire, diverse group of people. The truth is that issues of assimilation, respectability policing, classism, and interracial friendships are way more complex than they appear to be from this narrative.

The white lawyer was also problematic for me. She is clearly the character Picoult herself most identified with, and felt the most true-to-life. But by making the lawyer's transformation to "woke" status so central to the narrative, it felt like once again centering the experiences of white folks in regards to racism, rather than creating a more nuanced representation of the black experience.

What finally caused me to close the book for good, though, were the chapters written from the point of view of the white supremacist. As a white woman married to a black woman, I have a slough of black in-laws, nieces, and nephews. It was just too painful for me to read the chapters describing the man's experiences in the white nationalist movement, knowing that those people exist in the same world as my precious family. I know there is a benefit to us as a society by exploring white hate groups; you can't fight what you don't understand. But to be honest, I was not at all interested in reading the justifications for hatred and racial violence that made up the early chapters of this character's narrative. He seemed to be portrayed as some hapless dupe who fell into the movement due to a troubled past, and while that may be true of some who make up the white nationalist movement, the truth is that the leadership is invested in fomenting racial tension to manipulate their followers for their own enrichment and power. I could not find it in myself to see the man as a sympathetic character. Maybe that's my own character flaw, but there it is.

All of those criticisms aside, I know that Picoult was trying in her slightly inept way to bring light to important societal issues. I will probably read more of her books. I am a believer that a clumsy attempt at doing the right thing is better than no attempt at all. I just hope that Picoult continues to learn about the experiences of people of color in America, preferably by building relationships and listening to black voices, and comes to a more nuanced understanding than is evident here. 

Calling Me Home, Julie Kibler

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock the last couple of years knows that issues of race are on the forefront of our nation's conversations right now. Issues of mass incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, tensions between police and the communities they serve, and the increasing racial segregation of our society are all being hotly debated throughout all levels of our policial and social institutions. As such, there are been a lot of really remarkable books published that seek to examine the issues of racial justice, and bring us together to combat the continuing systemic racism that plagues our country.

And while there are plenty of really thought-provoking and inspiring non-fiction titles examining these issues (if you haven't already, find The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander or Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates), many times people need to be engaged emotionally before they feel motivated to dive into the complexities of the ways race affects our communal lives. Julie Kibler gives us a glimpse into the ways that race plays into our family and personal relationships in her novel, Calling Me Home. It tells the story of Isabelle McAllister, a wealthy woman in her 90s,  and Dorrie Curtis, Miss Isabelle's hairdresser and confidante. Moving back and forth between the Jim Crow south and the present day, Calling Me Home is both a love story, and a story about the sacrifices we make to protect ourselves and those we love.

Isabelle asks Dorrie to accompany her on a cross-country drive to a funeral. Dorrie, worried about her teenage son and a new romantic relationship, decides that maybe helping Miss Isabelle get where she needs to go will give her enough distance to get clarity on a few things. Miss Isabelle, for her part, uses the drive to unburden herself about a secret she's been keeping for decades. As a young woman in the 1930s, Miss Isabelle had a forbidden love affair with a young black man her worked for her family. Despite the dangers to both of them, but especially to him, they forge a deep bond of love that none of her family's condemnation can erase. Isabelle's youthful enthusiasm, and naivete, lead to tragic consequences that it takes until the end of the novel to truly understand.

The comparison between the past and present in the novel makes it clear that while the openly racist practices of things like "sundown towns" are no longer socially acceptable, the underlying "othering" of blacks, and the unwritten, unspoken boundaries between the white and black communities are in many ways still present. Dorrie spends a good part of the beginning of the novel questioing whether she can really trust a white woman like Isabelle, a sentiment that I am sad to say I have seen expressed by many women of color I love and respect in the wake of the recent presidential election. The story does veer a little bit into the sappy side from time to time, and it is hard to believe that the young Isabelle was really as naive as she appeared to be about the way her relationship would be perceived, but overall this story highlighted how poisonous racism can be, and the way it destroys relationships. And for those readers who like a twist, there is a surprise towards the end that heightens the emotional impact even more. Maybe after reading this story, and realizing that many of the same issues are still present, the reader will decide to pay attention to the ways that race and racism affect their relationships, their community, and the country as a whole. Because until you acknowledge a problem, you can't solve it.

Take One Candle, Light a Room

Many years ago now, I read a book call Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, by Susan Straight.  It's the story of a black woman living in poverty, doing whatever she can to raise her son in  violent neighborhood.  It is richly detailed, with an emotional honesty and depth of experience that you really are transported into the character's life.  When I finished the book, I was almost stunned to find that Susan Straight was a middle-class, middle aged white woman.  Not that it isn't possible for authors to write convincingly from a cross-racial viewpoint, but the book was so raw and the emotions felt so authentic I could only imagine someone who had been in similar circumstances to be able to articulate the story so well. When I delved a little more deeply, however, I realized that living in the racially and socioeconimcally diverse city of Riverside, California, and working in the struggling public schools there, gave her an insight that truly comes to life when paired with her remarkable facility with language.

So I was very pleased to get Take One Candle, Light a Room as a gift earlier this year.  It had been years since I had read one of Straight's books, and I was looking forward to what she could bring to her new subject-mainly, the inner struggle that comes from being of mixed-race, and how the legacy of slavery can affect the descendants of slaves even today.  The narrator of the book is Fantine Antoine, daughter/sister/niece/aunt of a mixed-race family originally from the Louisiana coast, now living in Rio Seco, California.  Fantine, who goes by FX in her professional life, is a travel writer-a profession which forces her to disappoint her mother on a daily basis, since it means that she has deserted the family compound for L.A. Fantine, just back from a trip to Switzerland, returns home to find her nephew on her doorstep-with two of his gang-banger friends.  Victor is a gentle, intelligent, creative type, scarred emotionally by his mother's murder five years before.  Tired from her travels, Fantine sends him away, promising to spend time with him the following weekend.  But when he and his friends are involved in a shooting that leads to the death of a rival gang member, Fantine embarks on a very different kind of trip, cross country and back through time and history to find him and bring him home.

Straight does a beautiful job of getting into the head of Fantine and her family members.  The family's history is firmly rooted in racial violence-her grandparents left Louisiana because of a white man who was preying on the young black girls in the parish.  Since coming to California, the family has stayed mostly in the small town where they settled, running an orchard and keeping to themselves.  Fantine was raised on the stories of the women who came before her, the slaves and former slaves who struggled to survive so their children and grandchildren could have a better life than the one they had.  Straight explores issues of revenge, belonging, guilt, redemption, and the invisible threads that keep us connected to our past, even as we try to run away from it.  Fantine's journey takes her back to Lousisana, and Straight uses Hurricane Katrina as a backdrop for the final climactic scenes of the book.  It's a story of second chances, for another shot at doing the right thing, and about the resilience of a people who refuse to give in to the titanic forces trying to tear them apart.

Love, by Toni Morrison

Faithful readers, you may have noticed it's been a month since my last post.  Must be the start of a new school year!  And this year, I have a new job, though at the same school.  What new job could it be, you ask?   I am a (wait for it...) READING COACH!  That's right, I get to spend my days helping teachers plan the best reading instruction to inspire new generations of readers-and I get to read children's and young adult books and get paid for it!  So, after a short blogging hiatus I am ready to get back to writing.

For some reason, I though that the beginning of a new school year would be a great time to start a Toni Morrison book.  Don't get me wrong I love everything about her and her work.  She is on the list of people whose warm, brilliant glow I would like to bask in as they share all of their wisdom about life.  My greatest dream would be to sit at the feet of Ms. Morrison and Maya Angelou and listen to them discuss the human experience as they understand it.  However, I'm not entirely sure I had enough cognitive power left over from learning a new job and working my tail off to fully appreciate the lyrical power that is Toni Morrison's story-telling when I started reading Love.

Love is the story of two women, bonded first by friendship and then by hatred, tied together by one man.  Heed Johnson and Christine Cosey are childhood friends.  Christine, the granddaughter of a wealthy black hotel owner, and Heed, the daughter of a poor, disreputable family, become fast friends, despite Christine's mother's disapproval at her daughter's fondness for the impoverished Heed.  All is well until Bill Cosey, Christine's grandfather, decides to take an 11-year-old Heed as his new wife.  While Heed celebrates her "good" fortune, Christine and her mother begin to see her as a threat.  Thus begins a feud that outlasts Bill Cosey, the hotel he owned, and most of the late 20th century.  In the end, the two women are left with nothing but a decaying house and their hatred towards each other.

Of course, I say in the end, but in actuality Morrison begins the novel when the women are old.  The narrative flows back and forth through time effortlessly.  This non-linear storytelling is a hallmark of most of Morrison's writing.  She also returns to one of her strongest themes for this novel, that of the relationships between women and how they are affected by race and class and sexism.  Heed and Christine are surrounded by a cast of characters each with a specific purpose.  Bill Cosey represents the "new" class of coloreds that rose up in the 1940s, when his upscale hotel drew black performers and celebrities alike.  He also represents the oppression that still existed for black women within their communities, even as some of their men began to gain wealth and power.  Of course, Bill Cosey also represents the idea of "separate but equal", as his goal was never to create an integrated resort, and indeed the white town leaders with whom he became so chummy would not have stood for it if he had.  Christine's mother May represented the fear and anxiety that struck the black community in the wake of the Civil Rights movement.  Convinced that the sweeping social changes taking place in the country were going to make the whites come and run them out, she took to hiding important papers, food, and supplies all over the small Florida community where they lived.  Celestial, Bill Cosey's mistress, represented both the myth of the oversexed woman, as well as the idea of freedom and licence.  The fact was that the other women in the community judged her harshly for her sexual freedom, and she just didn't care.  And there was Junior, a recently released ex-con from a juvenile detention center, convicted of killing her warden when she was 11 when he tried to sexually assault her.  Junior comes into the tense standoff between Heed and Christine and immediately tries to find ways to take advantage of their long-standing feud, picking both sides in the battle to inherit Bill Cosey's home so whatever happens, she'll be on the winning side.

This is a short novel, but it is rich in beauty and meaning.  Anyone familiar with Toni Morrison's work will immediately recognize everything that makes her writing so superlative-excellent characters, lyrical prose, and the ability to call attention to the subtle ways in which people are affected by repression and oppression.