Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler's Work

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.

Martin Japtok is Associate Professor of English at Palomar College, USA, and has authored Growing Up Ethnic: Nationalism and the Bildungsroman in African American and Jewish American Fiction (2005), edited Postcolonial Perspectives on Women Writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. (2003), and co-edited Authentic Blackness/"Real" Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Literature and Culture (2011) .

Jerry Rafiki Jenkins is Professor of English at Palomar College, USA, and is the author of The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction (2019) and co-editor of Authentic Blackness/"Real" Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Literature and Culture (2011).

Introduction Jerry Rafiki Jenkins and Martin Japtok.- The Somatopic Black Female Body within Archipelagic Space and Time in Octavia ButlersWild Seed Regina Hamilton.- Contextualizing Escape in the Neo-Slave Narratives of Octavia ButlersKindred and Sherley Anne WilliamsDessa Rose  Allison E. Francis.- (Dis)abling Normalcy: Octavia Butlers Critique of Disability inKindredHillary Weiss.- Transhumanism, Posthumanism, and the Human in Octavia ButlersXenogenesis Jerry Rafiki Jenkins.- But all we really know that we have is the flesh: Body-Knowledge, Mulatto Genomics, and Reproductive Futurities in Octavia ButlersXenogenesis K.A. Vado.- Your Body Has Made a Different Choice: Troubling Issues of Consent inDawnJoshua Yu Burnett.- What Is Love? Octavia Butlers Bloodchild Martin Japtok.- Accept the Risk: Octavia Butlers Bloodchild and Institutional Power Beth A. McCoy.- Learn or Die: Survival and Anarchy in Octavia Butler's Parable of the SowerStefanie Dunning.- Survival by any Means: Race and Gender, Passing and Performance inParable of the Sower andParable of the TalentsMicah Moreno.- Beyond Science Fiction: Genre inKindred and Butlers Short Stories Heather Duerre Humann.