Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Lenka Drešerová

Midnight Queens Dreaming: Black Feminism in African American Science Fiction Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph. D.

2015

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

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Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph.D. for his kind help and supervision of my diploma thesis, my sisters for being my role models and my partner for his support.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction...... 5

I.1. African American Science Fiction...... 10

I.2. Theoretical Background: Afrofuturism and Black Feminism...... 15

I.3. Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson...... 20

II. Race: Negotiation, Implication, Exhaustion...... 27

II.1. Ancestry: Revisiting the Past...... 28

II.2. Race and Societies: Envisioning Safe Places...... 36

II.3. The New Mestiza in African American Science Fiction...... 45

III. Gender: Black Girls Are the Future...... 49

III.1. Recognizing the Woman Within...... 51

III.2. Controlling Images...... 58

III.3. Affinity of Being a Black Woman...... 67

IV. Class: From Dystopia towards Utopia...... 72

IV.1. Class and Society: Learning from the Past and Present...... 75

IV.2. Constructing New Worlds: Utopian Hoping...... 86

IV.3. Class and a Black Woman‘s Identity: Issues to be Resolved...... 92

V. Conclusion: Midnight Queens Dreaming...... 98

Works Cited...... 104

English Resumé...... 110

Czech Resumé...... 111

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I. Introduction

In this thesis I focus on a recent subgenre of science fiction—Black feminist science fiction. To examine and understand the significance of science fiction of African American and Caribbean women writers, I use Black feminism as a theoretical background. The engagement of Black feminist theories allows me to focus on themes such as race, gender, and class that I find at the centre of attention of Black feminist science fiction. By comparing and contrasting the novels of two contemporary black women writers—Octavia

E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, I explore their visions on subverting racism, sexism, imperialism and colonialism. Since both authors are preoccupied with the position of a black woman in the society, be it real or fictional society, and her self-determination based on categories such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, I argue that Octavia E. Butler and

Nalo Hopkinson challenge the stereotypical character of these concepts and subvert them.

By revisiting the past and envisioning the future, the texts analyzed present utopian/dystopian worlds where black women are no longer oppressed and subdued.

The reason why I choose to write about science fiction is its highly imaginative qualities. It is a very free genre where the primary values are imagination and speculation.

A science fiction writer is offered a creative power to build new worlds which can have roots in reality but at the same time can go beyond it. Moreover, I understand science fiction as a social critique that addresses current pressing issues that stem from social injustice. Science fiction also has a political power and when written by someone who is not content with the current state of society, it can generate discussion about the pressing issues and eventually contribute to a positive change.

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As to the theoretical background, both experiencing the position of ―the Other‖ because of Octavia E. Butler‘s African American origin and Nalo Hopkinson‘s Caribbean origin, the science fiction works of these two authors reflect their position not only in the society, but also in science fiction—a genre that is believed to be predominantly white and masculine. To reflect their position in the society and in the genre itself, I focus on topics of race, gender, sexuality and class which are addressed through the lens of Black feminism. I use Black feminist epistemology to interpret the implications of their social critique that is projected into their fictional worlds.

When selecting the authors to analyze, I was motivated to choose Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson for the following reasons. Octavia E. Butler can be considered a mother of African American science fiction that emerged after the 1960s Civil Rights

Movement. As a woman, she introduced a new voice to the otherwise masculine genre. She also brought attention to issues connected to being black and woman. Moreover, both

Butler and Hopkinson are the graduates of the Clarion Writing Workshop, which is a famous workshop for aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers. Since the dates of their graduation differ by two decades, I find it interesting to compare and contrast the works of

Octavia E. Butler with one generation younger Nalo Hopkinson. In addition, Octavia E.

Butler comes from a different social and cultural background than Nalo Hopkinson. Unlike

Hopkinson who grew up in a middle-class intellectual family, Butler was raised only by her uneducated mother in poor conditions. Another interesting fact that saturates the presented analysis is that Octavia E. Butler is considered a mother of African American science

6 fiction, whereas Nalo Hopkinson has been recently viewed as a leading figure1 in Black feminist science fiction.

The works I analyze in this final thesis are Kindred (1979) and a trilogy Lilith’s

Brood (1987-89) by Octavia E. Butler and Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) and Midnight

Robber (2000) by Nalo Hopkinson. When selecting which works to analyze, I focused on their importance for the writers‘ careers and on their critical reception. Kindred by Octavia

E. Butler is now often included in classes on African American literature and taught ―along with the works of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker‖ (Rutledge 224). Lilith’s Brood is acclaimed for its discussion and challenging of the categories of race and gender. Brown

Girl in the Ring is Nalo Hopkinson‘s first novel that instantly became a big success and her

Midnight Robber only strengthened her position on the African American science fiction scene.

I decided to write on the subject of Black feminist science fiction despite many obstacles and challenges I had to undergo while obtaining primary and secondary sources.

Given the fact that science fiction is often omitted from the traditional Anglophone literary canon because of a label of popular literature, it has never been a subject of discussion in my literature program. The more I was surprised at its complexity and potential for challenging negative features of the society, such as discrimination and oppression of any kind, when I came across the texts of Nalo Hopkinson that became acclaimed at the turn of the 21st century. When I first learned about Nalo Hopkinson and her works, they struck me as exceptional by the way the Black feminist issues were addressed. I started researching other Black female science fiction authors only to find out that their number was and still is

1 In ―Futurist Fiction and Fantasy,‖ Gregory E. Rutledge asserts that ―Hopkinson ensures the continuation of a female voice in Black futurist fiction and fantasy. As a native West Indian, she has already introduced new elements into the genre‖ (247). 7 very limited.2 However, many authors3 who identified as Black (feminist) science fiction writers named Octavia E. Butler as their inspiration. Upon first learning about Nalo

Hopkinson, Octavia E. Butler was already a prolific representative of Black feminist science fiction, especially inspired by the Black feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, my research has a retrospective character, which interestingly accentuates the relativity of time and space typical for the science fiction genre.

Given the outsider position of science fiction in literary classes, there are only a few sources dealing with this genre in the Czech academic environment. All primary sources are from my personal collection as I was not successful in finding works of Nalo

Hopkinson in any Czech library. The novels Kindred (1979) and Lilith’s Brood (1987-89) by Octavia E. Butler are available in the library of Charles University in Prague.

As to the secondary sources, no broader scholarly discussion of African American science fiction emerged until 1990, but since then it has received steady academic attention and it continues to be explored across many academic fields and from many points of view.

However, African American science fiction written by female authors remains a relatively unexplored area. For this reason, I employ Black feminist discourse, using the framing texts on Black feminism by bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and Frances Beale whereas the analysis from the postmodernist stance is predominantly based on essays by Gloria

Anzaldúa and Donna Haraway. I complement these with a number of critical essays and interviews published in academic e-journals such as Callaloo or Science Fiction Studies.

Given the recent scholarly attention that Black feminist science fiction gets, I was

2 On her blog, Nalo Hopkinson published a link to a critical essay ―Diversity in Science Fiction Markets‖ by Tobias Buckell in which he complains about the persistent lack of diversity in science fiction in terms of race. 3 Namely Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due or Nnedi Okorafor. 8 dependent on electronic sources and found many useful secondary sources in Ebrary

Academic Complete.

The aim of my thesis is to explore the issues concerning Black feminist science fiction. This thesis consists of both the theoretical and analytical parts. It is divided into three main chapters dealing with the central themes of Black feminism—race, gender, and class as examined in the genre of science fiction. These categories correspond with the phenomenon of intersectional position of a black woman in the society.

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I.1. African American Science Fiction

The 1960s Civil Rights Movement brought about many changes in the society as well as in the field of literature. Since the 1970s, there has been a huge literary production of African American women authors. Henry L. Gates considers this black women‘s literary movement to be ―a distinct period in Afro-American literary history‖ (3) and has the potential to be ―one of the most productive and sustained‖ (3). The female authors who were previously silenced and disregarded were motivated to gain voice specific for their position in the society in order to speak about what they deemed important. Thus, as the female authors came to the forefront, so did the topics related to black woman‘s experience.

On a theoretical basis, the Black women‘s literary movement can be associated with the emergence of Black feminist thought.

As opposed to other genres, in particular realist fiction and poetry, science fiction is not recognizably acclaimed and sustained as African American. In the introduction to

Reading Black, Reading Feminist (1990), Henry L. Gates draws attention to the increasing number of published novels and books of poetry since the 1970s. He lists Octavia E. Butler among the most productive writers, but he does not recognize her as a science fiction writer, but as an African American female novelist (3). Gregory E. Rutledge asserts that science fiction shares similar themes of ―morality (bondage or freedom), religion and the supernatural, and the human condition (healing and metamorphosis)‖ (237) with African

American literature.

Science fiction is problematic to define. There is no exhaustive and descriptive definition. In an interview with Charles H. Rowell, Octavia E. Butler very eloquently says that ―science fiction must have internal consistency and science‖ (55). In another interview, she includes fantasy and science fiction into one family (Potts 337). Octavia E. Butler is

10 often asked by her interviewers why she chose science-fiction and what it means to her to which she replies that ―science fiction is supposed to be about exploring new ideas and possibilities‖ (Potts 332).

On the other hand, Nalo Hopkinson‘s definition of science fiction is more intuitive as she states that she ―loved science fiction and the ways in which it speculates on our world and social systems‖ (Watson-Aifah 168). Nalo Hopkinson shares Octavia E. Butler‘s opinion that science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, futurist fiction are just marketing

―labels‖ that are intertwined. Moreover, Nalo Hopkinson claims that ―science fiction is often used as an umbrella term‖ (Simpson 107) for speculative fiction, futurist fiction, fantasy or fantastical science fiction. Therefore, she calls for a move to ―subvert the genre of science fiction/fantasy‖ (Watson-Aifah 167), which illustrates her unwillingness to succumb to any specific definition of the genre within which she creates.

As to the features of science fiction, Gregory E. Rutledge in his ―Futurist Fiction and Fantasy: The ‗Racial‘ Establishment‖ asserts that it is a literary genre that provides a lot of space for imagination and construction of new worlds. An important aspect of science fiction is its ―didacticism‖ (237). It is closely connected to ―human concerns‖ (Russ in

Rutledge 237) and it enables to address them in an innovative and maybe more effective way. In this way, science fiction can be highly sociopolitical. The most recent attempt to come up with a definition is represented by John Rieder‘s essay ―On Defining SF, or Not:

Genre Theory, SF, and History‖ where he proposes two important features: ―sf is historical and mutable‖ and ―[it] has no essence, no single unifying characteristic, and no point of origin‖ (193). Thus, science fiction is like its ever-changing incomplete definition. Both

Butler and Hopkinson, as well as scholars analyzing their works are inconsistent in the usage of the term ―science fiction.‖ They often oscillate between the terms ―speculative

11 fiction,‖ ―futurist fiction,‖ ―fabulist fiction‖ or even ―fantastical science fiction.‖ However, to prevent any confusion I will use the term science fiction for their works throughout this thesis.

Science fiction is often perceived as a low-status genre in comparison with poetry or realist fiction. It is not my aim to describe the history of science fiction in detail, but I find it important to clarify why science fiction is not treated as a serious literary genre. Along with the development in paper production in the 1920s, there was a boom in publishing various low budget magazines called ―pulp‖ (Roberts 51). These pulps were issued in large numbers publishing science fiction stories of varying qualities. In consequence, the popularity and accessibility had a rather ―unfortunate heritage to SF‖ (Roberts 52) later in the second half of the 20th century. Pulp‘s association with cheap popular publishing led to the degradation of science fiction and promoted its stigmatization as a popular shallow genre, as opposed to high-status (Modernist) literature.

The first black authors who attempted to penetrate into science fiction were predominantly men. The dawn of African American science fiction in the 1960s is associated with Samuel Delany. He is considered a hallmark in African American science fiction4, although he prefers to use the term ―speculative fiction‖ (Rutledge 238). For many contemporary science fiction writers, Samuel Delany is their role model not only because of his writing, in which he addresses issues of race and sexuality, but also because of his commitment to de-racialize the genre of science fiction.5 In his works, he revised the stereotypical representation of people of color who were previously either omitted or

4 Gregory E. Rutledge claims that Samuel Delany can be viewed as ―the architect of the Black Futurist Fiction/Fantasy movement, not unlike LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka‘s role relative to the Black Arts/Power movements‖ (243). 5 Nalo Hopkinson mentions Samuel Delany in many interviews. In an interview with Dianne D. Glave, she mentions his disillusionment with lack of writers of color in science fiction (151). 12 depicted only as minor and inferior characters (Roberts 96). In addition, in 1984 he published Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, where for the first time in science fiction the protagonist is not only African American, but also homosexual (Rutledge 244). His attempt to include more people of color into science fiction, both as characters and as authors, is illustrated in his active participation in writing workshops. The most prominent creative writing program is Clarion Writing Workshop where he met Nalo Hopkinson who was his student.

The 1970s was also a very influential period for science fiction as there was an increasing number of female authors and authors of color who were tempted to write within this genre. The most important figures and ―the present-day giants of the field‖ (Roberts

65) are Ursula LeGuin and Octavia E. Butler. It is interesting to note that male authors of color found their way into science fiction sooner than female authors, which illustrates sexism within this genre. For a long time, the female audience had to read science fiction

―with a sense of themselves as alienated or at least sidelined spectators‖ (Roberts 72). It is possible to associate the second wave feminism with growing interest and possibility to write about gender oppression within the predominantly masculine genre. The Civil Rights

Movement generated an increased awareness of all writers with issues of racial oppression.

As a result, women writers of science fiction did not attempt to imitate the previous science fiction. They put emphasis on challenging the genre‘s norms and tradition.

Ursula LeGuin is considered to be a mother of feminist science fiction as she explored gender relations in her works as the first female author. LeGuin‘s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is very often mentioned in connection with feminist science fiction as her novel is perceived as very innovative in terms of themes she addresses. She criticized

―the genre‘s habit of casting the future as the 1880s British Empire‖ (Davis qtd. in Kilgore

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345) due to its lack of women and people of color in the imagined worlds. Until the 1970s, science fiction was highly sexist in depicting female characters as weak, powerless beings that have to be saved from evil space aliens or robots. Besides criticizing sexism, she points to the unequal relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and to the undesirable promotion of racism.

Combining Samuel Delany‘s quest to revise representation of blackness and Ursula

LeGuin‘s feminist voice, Octavia E. Butler is perceived to be a founder of Black feminist science fiction. Upon publishing her first novel Patternmaster in 1976, she quickly became a prominent author writing about many pressing issues of the contemporary society, such as race and gender, from a black woman‘s point of view. Therefore, one can say that Butler

―initiated the Black feminist phase of African-American FFF‖ (Rutledge 244) where the abbreviation stands for Futurist Fiction and Fantasy. Contrary to Delany, who focused mostly on speculations about the future, Butler skillfully used means of science fiction, such as time-traveling, to explore issues related to the African-American past.

Since the late 1990s, Nalo Hopkinson has been the most visible author who

―ensures the continuation of a female voice in Black FFF‖ (Rutledge 247). Hopkinson recognizes the potential of science fiction genre as an arena for fighting the oppressive categories as experienced by black women. However, she does not blindly follow the short lived tradition of African American feminist science fiction as inherited from Delany and

Butler, but she brings a new insight into this specific genre. In her works she gives a new direction by incorporating the notion of post-colonial experience6. As an author coming

6 Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan published an anthology called So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (2004) in which they draw attention to science fiction in the Caribbean region. Nalo Hopkinson describes the post-colonial science fiction as ―stories that take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, with irony, with anger, 14 from the Caribbean region where she was not a minority due to her race, in her works

―[r]ace loses much of its centrality […] as class warfare, often existing along ethno-racial fault lines, predominates‖ (Rutledge 247).

A major role in the writing careers of both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson played the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop. The Clarion Writing Workshop is an annual six-week program in creative writing founded in 1968 (Booker 66). It has been taught by many important scholars and writers, including Samuel Delany who tutored Nalo

Hopkinson. Octavia E. Butler is also its alumni and participated in leading the workshop for several years. The Clarion Writing Workshop holds a very prestigious position as it manages to produce many successful and award-winning science fiction writers. Many graduates of Clarion have received Hugo and Nebula Awards7, which are two of the most prestigious awards in science fiction (Roberts 72) and both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo

Hopkinson are recipients of these awards.

I.2. Theoretical Background: Afrofuturism and Black Feminism

Traditionally, African American science fiction has been viewed through the lens of

Afrofuturism, which is a recent literary and cultural aesthetic. The term Afrofuturism was first coined by Mark Dery in his 1994 introductory essay to ―Black to the Future:

Interviews with Samuel Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose‖ to describe the self-conscious

with humour, and also with love and respect for the genre of science fiction that makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things‖ (9). 7According to an entry in Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature (2015), Hugo Award is an award for excellence that has been awarded annually since 1955 by fans and members of World Science Fiction Society. Nebula Award has been awarded by Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and its board since 1965 in categories of best novel, novella, novelette, and short story. These joint awards are celebrated also for their attempt to include less known or yet unpublished authors.

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―African-American culture‘s appropriation of technology and SF imagery‖ (6)8. He proposes to use science fiction and its potential for dealing with issues connected to racial oppression and presents futures for African Americans where they would not be oppressed anymore. Mark Dery‘s initial conundrum was: ―Why do so few African Americans write science fiction, a genre whose close encounters with the Other—the stranger in a strange land—would seem uniquely suited to the concerns of African-American novelists?‖ (180).

Keeping this question in mind, I want to explore the potential of science fiction for recasting the Other and subverting the present notions of race. Yet, Afrofuturism neglects issues that stem from the position of a black woman in the society. Therefore, I approach the novel from the Black feminist perspective.

Black feminism is a political and social movement that emerged in the 1970s in the

United States. It was lead by African American women who reacted to the persisting oppressive forces of sexism, racism, and classism. It followed from their discontent with the feminist movement of the 1970s and the Civil Rights Movement, because the political agenda of both of these movements did not put the subject of an African American woman into its centre of attention. Black feminism emphasizes ―both Black women‘s empowerment and conditions of social justice‖ (Collins x). The common topic of Black feminist literature is fight against any form of oppression stemming from the interlocking categories of race, gender, and class. By addressing these issues, Black feminists aim to subvert and deconstruct them.

8 In ―Black to the Future: Afrofuturism 1.0,‖ Mark Dery quotes Erik Davis who argues that Afrofuturism also plays a significant role in music and cinematography. In fact, Afrofuturism is mainly discussed in relation to music as it combines electric music with traditional African beats that one can hear in the music of Sun Ra, Labelle, or Janelle Monae, as an important Afrofuturist scholar Alondra Nelson refers to these musicians in an interview on Afrofuturism that was recorded and published on Youtube.com by Soho Rep., a New York institution dedicated to the promotion of innovative contemporary theatre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFhEjaal5js).

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African American women want to speak out for themselves and finally be heard.

But most of all, they strive for an opportunity to chose. Bell hooks in Feminist Theory argues that it is the absence of choices as ―being oppressed means absence of choices‖ (5) that causes the oppression in the first place. Mothers (in literal and figurative sense) of

Black feminists were bereft of choices; their right to choose was denied to them. Black feminism proudly proclaims its connection with previous female African American fighters against oppression who were not given a chance to get organized and whose very inspirational works were almost forgotten9. Black feminists re-discovered and promoted their thoughts and their contribution to the fight for African American female voice.

For better understanding of Black feminism, it is useful to explain its points of departure with the Civil Rights Movement and with the white feminism of the 1970s. The

Civil Rights Movement focused on racial issues and disregarded the issues of gender. It was only fought by male and for male. African American women were excluded from this fight as no one addressed the everyday issues they had to tackle. On the other hand, feminism of the 1970s was only dealing with problems experienced by white middle-class women. White feminism fought against sexism, but omitted racism and even promoted classism. Thus, an African American woman found herself completely aside from the political and social discourse and yet tossed by its implications.

In the 1970s, Frances Beale published an essay called ―Double Jeopardy: To Be

Black and Woman‖ in which she calls for the subversion of racism and sexism. In addition, she states that any women‘s struggle that does not have an ―anti-imperialist and anti-racist ideology has absolutely nothing in common with the Black woman‘s struggle,‖ (120) by which she phrases a Black feminist inclination to the socialist thought. Angela Davis also

9 For example works of Zora Neale Hurston or Nella Larsen. 17 adopted the socialist thinking, which inspired her to publish Women, Race, and Class

(1981). There, she explores how imperialism and capitalism contributed to the oppression and exploitation of black women since slavery.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of a new Black feminist theory represented by Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks. Patricia Hill Collins published her

Black Feminist Thought in 1990 and it immediately became an essential text when speaking about Black feminism. She defined four major themes of Black feminism. First, she identifies self-definition and self-evaluation as an important factor in resisting ―the negative controlling images of Black womanhood advanced by Whites‖ (Collins 10). Second, Black women are attempting to challenge and subvert the ―overarching‖ and ―interlocking‖

(Taylor qtd. in Collins 235) categories of race, class, and gender. Third, Black feminism is equally committed to intellectual aspects and political activism (Collins 3). Last theme that she defines is Black feminists‘ recognition of their unique cultural heritage that they embrace and use for creating coalition that adds to their self-empowerment (Collins 39).

Therefore, I focus on these four tenets in my analysis.

The central topic of Black feminism is black femininity and its oppressive and exploitative intersectional position. According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term

―intersectionality‖ in her insightful essay ―Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and

Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and

Antiracist Politics‖ published in 1989, she imagines the position of an African American woman as if she is standing right in the middle of a traffic intersection. She explains that:

[d]iscrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one

direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an

intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of

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directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is

harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex

discrimination or race discrimination… But it is not always easy to

reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply

indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine

which driver caused the harm. (33)

Crenshaw argues that an African American woman can be discriminated from many directions and according to many oppressive categories. Black feminism does not center its attention on fighting another group. Black feminists do not blame anyone and ―they do not write against a certain group‖ (Gates 3). Their commitment is to ignite a discussion and raise awareness of their position that would put an end to racism, sexism, and classism.

Black feminism conjoined political activism, represented by Angela Davis, and cultural criticism. In 1985, Barbara Christian was the first scholar to publish a landmark volume on Black women literary tradition called Black Women Novelists: the Development of a Tradition. It was inspired by the process of reinterpretation and also promotion of authors such as Zora Neale Hurston or Nella Larsen. Other authors that need to be mentioned in connection with Black feminism are Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

In reviving Black women writers and their works, Barbara Christian called for a new literary theory on the Black feminist thought. But she refused to artificially create any prescriptive theory. She rather focused on describing the difference between white and black criticism, suggesting that ―instead of looking high, […] we should look low‖

(Christian 51), on the everyday events such as cooking, gardening, quilting, and storytelling, where the legacy of their silenced mothers can finally speak.

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Black feminist movement in arts and literature was not as self-proclaimed as

Harlem Renaissance or Black Arts Movement (Gates 3) as it rather emerged from ―a common interest in resurrecting, explicating and canonizing the African American women‘s literary tradition‖ (Gates 7). The fact that many African American female writers and activists of earlier eras almost sunk into oblivion proves to be one of the causes of their oppression.

In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins reflects on the role of arts and literature by African American women and asserts that ―reinterpreting existing works through new theoretical frameworks is another dimension of developing Black feminist thought‖ (14). Her statement inspires me to analyze Octavia E. Butler‘s and Nalo

Hopkinson‘s works employing Black feminist epistemology by which I contribute to its actualization and further development.

I. 3. Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson

It is essential to provide background to Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson since their work is informed by the social and cultural environment they come from. Nalo

Hopkinson explains that her ―work is woman-centered because that‘s what I know, and that‘s what I grew up with‖ (Watson-Aifah 168). Octavia E. Butler asserts that her mother‘s and grandmother‘s life experience ―contributed to [her] work as a writer and she wanted these life experiences to be recognized‖ (Rowell 50). Thus, both authors admit they seek inspiration in the environment that is the most common to them and acknowledge the influence their families had on them as writers.

What connects and what differentiates Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson?

Most of all, they both share passion for science fiction and fantasy and thanks to this

20 passion they have produced number of remarkable literary works. Similarly to Octavia E.

Butler, Nalo Hopkinson received Nebula Award, which is a major award for science fiction. They share an experience of being disadvantaged as writers because of their learning disorder (Hopkinson; Lennard 7). Beside the facts that connect them, there are lots of things that differentiate them. They come from different cultural and social background and there is one generation age gap between them. These experiences have also influenced them in their views of the North American society which they project into their science fiction where they negotiate possibilities for change to better or worse.

Octavia Estelle Butler was a very successful science fiction writer of extreme importance for the establishment of the Black feminist science fiction. She was born in

Pasadena, California, in 1947. In an interview with Charles H. Rowell, she recalls her childhood without her father who died when she was only two years old and her mother had to support the family while working as a maid (50). Her resolute grandmother played an important role in her life, too. Coming from poor conditions and surrounded by women who did everything they could to make ends meet, she grew up aware of the difficulties a black woman has to face.

She was one of the few African American and even fewer women writers in the science-fiction field. Yet, she managed to get to the top despite being unprivileged in terms of race, gender, and class as she spoke from different perspectives and addressed various audiences. De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai assert that Butler was deliberately and consciously responsible to three audiences: the science fiction audience, the black audience, and the feminist audience (354). She had a lot to offer to her readers with different world-views, and this way she managed to gain her place not only within her favorite genre, but also within the American literature in general.

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A generation younger Nalo Hopkinson was born in 1960 in Jamaica. Hopkinson has become a prominent figure in contemporary African American feminist science fiction and has been appraised for her unique style in which she mixes cultures, traditions, and languages of various geographical places and classes and infuses them with her own imagination. She is one of the few scholars who in their works address also the topics of post-colonialism.

In an interview with Dianne D. Glave, she speaks about her growing up. Contrary to

Octavia E. Butler, she grew up in a literary environment in Trinidad and Guyana as her mother was a library technician and her father was a poet, playwright, and a professor of

English and Latin. He was a member of the Caribbean literary circle and a friend of Derek

Walcott, who spoke for the people of the Caribbean origin and in his poetry contemplated on the subject of colonialism and its consequences (154). Nalo Hopkinson was keen on literature, but started writing only after her father died in 1993. Given this background in which she was raised and her relocation to Canada, her novels draw upon Caribbean traditions and the experience of a shift from being a majority to being a minority.

Octavia E. Butler started writing short stories at a very early age motivated by her realization that in the genre she enjoyed were no black or female characters. She speaks about it in an interview for New York Times published online in 2000, saying:

when I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn‘t

in any of this stuff I read. […] The only black people you found were

occasional characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn‘t manage

anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I‘m me and I‘m here and I‘m

writing.

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Who was she looking for in her readings and who did she identify herself with? It follows from her comment that she started writing in reaction to the absence of confident and decisive young black women, who were part of the world she lived in, though overlooked and oppressed. Early in her writing, she began to address social and political life in the

1960s which was dominated by white people. Her first published novel was Patternmaster

(1976).

As I mentioned, Nalo Hopkinson started writing only after her father‘s death. She started attending various writing workshops and her first teacher, Judy Merril, a successful science fiction author and a feminist, had a recognizable impact on Nalo Hopkinson‘s literary production (Watson-Aifah 161). Hopkinson‘s first novel won the Warner Aspect

First Novel Contest in 1997 and was published by Warner Aspect in July of 1998

(Hopkinson). But it was Midnight Robber (2000) that earned her reputation and placed her within the African American science fiction writing community.

Octavia E. Butler welcomed Nalo Hopkinson to the African American science fiction writing community of which she was considered the mother (Due). Tananarive Due, her pupil and literary daughter describes Butler as a very shy person who enjoyed being alone (Due). Yet, she wanted to participate in the fight of black women for their voice and place in the society represented by the emerging Black feminist movement. Given her introverted personality in the real world, Butler preferred to pick up a fight within the imagined world that would have also ever-lasting changing effect. She decided to undermine the white male dominance in the United States by appropriating one of their forms of expression and becoming so successful, innovative, and influential in their genre that she would not only change the genre but also world-views of the sci-fi reading audience. For this reason, she aimed to write about experience of being seen as the Other

23 and actually being the Other. Tananarive Due describes how Octavia E. Butler was perceived as a Black feminist in an obituary in National Public Radio:

Sister, we got cities burning, you know, they were telling her. And how

dare she, you know, sort of retreat into this world. But actually, she was

showing us an even bigger world, you know, something that we couldn‘t

even wrap our minds around. And that‘s important.

Therefore, Octavia E. Butler became a role model and an inspiration for the new generation of writers of science fiction, including Tananarive Due or Nalo Hopkinson.

In order to position Octavia E. Butler within Black feminism, I draw attention to her background. She witnessed the rise of the Black feminist movement as well as the Civil

Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. In an interview with Charles H.

Rowell, she says that she was aroused by the fact how black men overlooked women, especially their mothers (51). Octavia E. Butler admits that her professor of African

American literature made an impression on her and encouraged her to follow her dreams of being a writer (Rowell 60). Interestingly, Nalo Hopkinson was also inspired by her first professor Judy Merril, who was an ―influential science fiction editor‖ and ―part of the feminist wave of science fiction‖ (Watson-Aifah 161). Despite being influenced by the feminist scholars, both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson claim that their characters are written not from explicitly feminist point of view, but based on realities that they experienced or observe in the world.

Nevertheless, both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson have been quite often asked how they feel about being called African-American or Caribbean-Canadian women writers. In one of her last interviews for SciFiDimensions with John C. Snyder, Octavia E.

Butler‘s answer was that:

24

[i]t's silly because it puts me in a weird corner. It puts me in such a strange

corner that a lot of people don't want to look at what I've done - either

because they think they know what it is, or they're afraid of what it might be.

I've gone to interviews where that's all anybody wanted to talk about. ‗What

do you think of yourself as... How do you define this... How do you define

that...‘ It's very tiresome.

She mentions that people still have certain prejudice against her books, because she is

African American and a woman and many people know her for her novel Kindred. The main plot takes place in the antebellum Maryland and discusses slavery. This limited description of Kindred seems to be enough for certain people to put her in a box that would define her as an author. Similarly to Nalo Hopkinson, she refuses to see the definition as important. In other words, self-definition is important, but it matters only if a person can or is willing to define himself/herself and not how others define him/her.

Octavia E. Butler was a shy person who grew strongly attached to the West Coast.

That was where she was born, where she lived and where she died in 2007 at the age of 58 after falling down and hitting her head near her home in Seattle. Contrary to Butler‘s rootedness in the West Coast, Nalo Hopkinson always seems to be on the move. She was born in Jamaica, but most of her childhood she lived in Trinidad and Guyana. I speak about her as a Caribbean writer because she employs Caribbean mythology, tradition and Creole in her works. However, Nalo Hopkinson refers to herself on her blog NaloHopkinson.com as being both Caribbean and Canadian, black writer and just a writer, both woman and ―all the above, and more. All those identities are very important to me. I don't need to claim just one.‖ This shows her opinion on claiming one‘s identity. There is not just one complete set one has to stick to. As in Black feminism, there are several categories one can identify with,

25 for example being black and a woman. By claiming one‘s roots and everything that shapes one‘s self enables a person to adopt a sensibility. She feels to be part of every place and every culture she has encountered, including the ones she imagines in her science fiction, and yet she feels to be rejected because she is not a fully-fletched member10, because she refuses to accept just one box by which others could judge her.

The claim that Octavia E. Butler meant a hallmark in Black feminist science fiction is true, because she was aiming at encouraging and mentoring young talented writers of color within her cooperation with the Clarion and Clarion West Writing Workshops. After

Octavia E. Butler‘s unexpected decease, Nalo Hopkinson became one of the members who founded The Octavia E. Butler‘s Scholarship Fund managed by Carl Brandon Society. Nalo

Hopkinson herself attended the Clarion Writing Workshops that helped her start her writing career. Nowadays, Nalo Hopkinson embodies a new stream in African American science fiction with special regard to black femininity. So, speaking in favor and for the people who find themselves marginalized in any way, the two writers contribute to the raising awareness of science fiction as a means of social and political commentary. The central themes of Octavia E. Butler‘s and Nalo Hopkinson‘s texts are the social justice and/or its breach, as well as cultural diversity, nature of humanity, and in/tolerance.

10 She comments on not being white and Western in one of her video interviews for TVO channel published on YouTube. 26

II.I. Race: Negotiation, Implication, and Exhaustion

The understanding and negotiation of race is a topic worth exploring particularly in science fiction due to its immense space for imagination where everything is possible. As

I show on the novels by Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, science fiction offers space for creating new species, new civilizations, or new alien creatures so different from humans so that it undermines our notion and understanding of the Other. Science fiction can also teach us to be more tolerant, understanding towards and less judgmental of any differences among people, species, or creatures in general. Despite the fact that Octavia E. Butler‘s and

Nalo Hopkinson‘s works are considered science fictional they are very often built on reality, on real concepts that shape one‘s identity and world-views. And one of these everyday things that play an important role in the understanding of one‘s identity is race.

Therefore, in this chapter, I explore how Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson deal with the concept of race in their works where they envision new fictional worlds and how race influences the self-definition of Butler‘s and Hopkinson‘s female protagonists.

Both Butler and Hopkinson use their characters as a means to convey certain visions on the race discourse, because they, too, occupy a standpoint of someone whose own life experience has been influenced by the intersectional position of race, gender, and class.

Nalo Hopkinson answers the question why her major protagonists are always African

American women, by saying: ―my work is woman-centered because that‘s what I know, and that‘s what I grew up with‖ (Watson-Aifah 168). Octavia E. Butler has also been inspired by her own experience of being marginalized as an African American woman. In an interview she reveals her frustration of not finding people like her in the literature she read as she says that: ―I couldn‘t find me there, so I wrote myself in‖ (Schweitzer 26). In

27 other words, both authors embrace the socio-cultural construct of race and identify themselves as African American women as they decide to write their novels from an

African American female point of view. Moreover, the issues that they deem important to address correlate with the issues that are central to Black feminism, especially the empowerment of an African American woman.

In Black feminism, the literary tradition of black women writers is widely discussed, because it works against any efforts to silence the voice of the marginalized.

Contrary to African American male authors, who eagerly claim a white literary tradition, black women writers often declare descent from black women literary ancestors (Gates 3) and thus encourage a bloom of African American literary sisterhood. The need for African

American literary sisterhood is the central idea of ―Towards a Black Feminist Criticism,‖ one of the founding texts of Black feminist criticism written by Barbara Smith. In this essay, Barbara Smith argues that the creation of sisterhood is important for the exploration of ―both sexual and racial politics and Black and female identity [which] are inextricable elements in Black women's writings‖ (163). Octavia E. Butler was the first author to introduce a fully-fletched black female heroine into science fiction and by including her in her novels she initiated a new literary tradition—―the Black feminist phase of African

American FFF‖ (Rutledge 244). Therefore, the concept of race can be explored in the context of Black feminism, as Octavia E. Butler‘s protagonists embody its main ideas.

II.1. Ancestry: Revisiting the Past

Race is one of the key aspects that plays an important part in the works I analyze. In

Kindred, Octavia E. Butler looks back at the experience of race through revisiting the time of slavery, whereas in Lilith’s Brood she proposes a solution to the racial oppression by

28 recasting the whole human species. In her article ―Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the

Science Fiction of Octavia Butler,‖ Hoda M. Zaki argues that Octavia E. Butler suggests a creation of hybrid societies where the concept of difference (ab)used politically might survive, but race would not be a relevant determiner of difference (241). On the other hand, in Brown Girl in the Ring Nalo Hopkinson depicts an isolated world of the Others

(Caribbean, African American, Indian, Romani people, etc.) and proposes a post-racial society in Midnight Robber. By presenting different perspectives on the concept of race within various societies, be they utopian or dystopian, the two authors critique the present black realities and envision better futures for people of color.

When discussing race in science fiction, it is essential to include the term

Afrofuturism in the discussion and trace its elements in the works of the two authors. In

Afrofuturism, it is crucial to establish a link between one‘s African American past and rewrite its significance with the help of science fiction imagery combined with the African roots. Alondra Nelson, a scholar dedicated to Afrofuturism contends that the Afrofuturist works ―represent new directions in the study of African diaspora culture that are grounded in the histories of black communities‖ (9). In other words, Afrofuturism is a continuance of the (afro)past, the continuance of the relationship to one‘s roots and to one‘s ancestry. In many ways, it enables to explore the African diaspora culture and offers a new ways of dealing with the issues related to such diaspora. Moreover, Alondra Nelson asserts that the

―space of Afrofuturism as a space of possibility and speculation allows […] for people to be outside of everything in normative traditions in all sorts of way‖ (―Afrofuturism‖), which captures the transgressive politics of the concept.

In the novels by Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, the main characters claim descent from black women ancestors and the relationship to their ancestry shapes their

29 present identities. By looking to the past and understanding their African or Caribbean roots they ensure a continuance of the past to the future. Such continuance is deemed important not only by Afrofuturists, but also by Black feminists as ―black women have been absent from official black histories and literary criticism‖ (Gates 6). Mark Dery claims that African American community, ―whose past has been deliberately rubbed out,‖ (180) now still focuses too much on searching for ―legible traces of its history‖ (180) that it forgets to focus on its position in the future. Thus, Afrofuturism should help the African

American community not only find its roots and appropriate them, but also provide this community with new means of approaching its African origin.

One of the ways to deal with one‘s origin is depicted in Midnight Robber by Nalo

Hopkinson. Tan-Tan relates to her ancestors through human characters surrounding her, who are very conscious of their African or Caribbean origins. Tan-Tan‘s nanny11 teaches her about the history of their people by telling her a number of different stories. She especially loves stories based on the Caribbean oral tradition, for example the Anansi stories or the stories about the Midnight Robber. In an interview published on SF Site, Nalo

Hopkinson explains that the Midnight Robber is ―a particularly Trinidadian metaphor for exile, which is what happens to Tan-Tan […]. [It] is a classical masquerade from the

Trinidad Carnival.‖ He dresses up as a robber and deceives people during the Joonkanoo

Carnival. Tan-Tan witnesses a performance of the tale about the Midnight Robber, describing it as:

11 There is a difference between ―nanny‖ and ―Nanny‖ in Nalo Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber, where Tan-Tan refers to her nanny as ―nursie‖. On the other hand, ―Nanny‖ which is an omnipresent feminine Artificial Identity, a female version of the so-called ―Big Brother‖. ―Granny Nanny‖ differs from ―Big Brother‖ by being tolerant, understanding, and keepings every information secret, unless it might hurt someone. 30

[t]he classic tale, much embroidered over the centuries, [that] mirrored the

autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, an African noble‘s son stolen into

slavery on seventeenth-century Earth. The Robber King‘s [speeches] told of

escaping the horrors of slavery and making their way into brigandry as a

way of surviving in the new and terrible white devils‘ land in which they‘d

found themselves. (57)

The Midnight Robber or the Robber King invents these stories to tell their victims about the injustice he had to undergo in the alien land. This particular figure from the Caribbean oral history has become Tan-Tan‘s most favorite one also because she identifies with his story later in the novel, as Antonio, her father and a mayor of the Cockpit County who commits a murder, is expelled from Toussaint. He has to leave everything behind, but refuses to give up his daughter Tan-Tan, and so he takes her with him to the exile. Similarly to the

Midnight Robber, she finds herself in a new strange world and the only way to survive the dreads of that place is to become a Robber Queen herself. In other words, her identification with the legend of the past—Midnight Robber allows Tan-Tan to have a future.

Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring are similar in their treatment of the relation to the ancestry. They both employ the Caribbean and African oral tradition. One of the core topics of Brown Girl in the Ring related to the oral tradition is the Caribbean and

African shamanism. Ti-Jeanne, a young woman and a single mother, lives in the decaying centre of Toronto with her baby and her grandmother Gros-Jeanne, who has become a local healer. Gros-Jeanne is respected for her spiritual powers, although many people are either afraid of her because of those powers or they mock her and call her a witch because of her knowledge and practice of the Afro-Caribbean shamanism called Orisha or Obeah. At first,

Ti-Jeanne refuses to believe that shamanism could be true until she personally experiences

31 it. Then, she realizes that it is a precious gift that her ancestors have been passing on for centuries, but sharing it with only the chosen ones. Her grandmother Gros-Jeanne tells her that ―[f]rom since slavery days, we people get in the habit of hiding we business from we own children even, in case a child open he mouth and tell somebody a story and get them in trouble. Secrecy was survival, oui?‖ (50). Before, Ti-Jeanne thought that the Caribbean magic and folklore bound to it were only an oral history without any special value. But after Ti-Jeanne realizes that shamanism and spirits are true and that she is bound to the spirits by blood, she sets out to fight the mafia boss, Rudy, who runs the city and keeps it under his rule. In this sense, the Caribbean shamanism that Ti-Jeanne uses to save her city can be interpreted as a force enabling and shaping the African and Caribbean future. In a way, Nalo Hopkinson puts Afrofuturism into practice.

In Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, the relationship of an individual to one‘s origins is depicted in an original way because Dana meets her African American ancestors in person as she travels back in time to the 1820s Maryland. This fact illustrates Mark Dery‘s proposal to use the imagination of science fiction in order to explore one‘s past (180). Dana is a young African American woman in her twenties who lives in the 1976 Los Angeles and tries to become a writer. Apparently, writing cannot support her and so she does other minor, mindless jobs provided by a labor agency. When describing the absurd practices of the labor agency and its humiliating treatment of the job-seekers, she calls it ―a slave market‖ (53). Ironically, this expression soon gains a completely different meaning. In a critical essay to Kindred, which is published in the novel, Robert Crossley suggests that

Dana‘s time-travelling story might not have actually happened and that she ―simply got caught up in the nostalgia of examining old papers and books‖ (287). Indeed, her time-

32 travelling begins when she is unpacking boxes full of books. She describes her first trip to the past and says:

The house, the books, everything vanished. Suddenly, I was outdoors

kneeling on the ground beneath trees. I was in a green place. I was at edge of

a woods. Before me was a wide tranquil river, and near the middle of that

river was a child splashing, screaming… Drowning! (13)

The drowning child is Rufus, her great-great-grandfather whose family owns a Maryland plantation and many slaves working on it. Rufus is somehow able to call Dana from the future to help him when his life is in danger. I see an interesting symbolism in the fact that

Dana returns to the past because her ancestor is drowning. Despite saving him, she is the one who is drowning in her own past marked by the legacy of slavery. Dana revisits the past and meets her ancestors in person. This encounter influences Dana‘s understanding of where she comes from as she starts disclosing the good and bad sides of her ancestors.

In Kindred, Midnight Robber, and Brown Girl in the Ring, the past is represented by the main characters‘ connection to their ancestry and their culture represented by oral tradition, which can be understood as a parallel to the literary tradition that is deemed important in Black feminism (Smith 163). It is apparent that this bond influences the character‘s experience of race which does not necessarily have to be negative.

As far as the connection with the African or Caribbean ancestors is examined, one work differs from the other novels I analyze—Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler. The reason why I find it different is its unwillingness to overarch the gap between the present and the past as the past is charged with negativity and should not be talked about. Lilith12 is

12 Possibly, the author chooses to name her character Lilith to refer to the biblical Lilith, ―Adam‘s first wive [who] refused to submit to his rule and [therefore] was cast out of Eden‖ (Peppers 47). 33 an African American 26-year-old woman who finds herself on the Oankali spaceship among the strange-looking Oankali extraterrestrials. At one point, she remembers her life back on Earth before it was destroyed by a nuclear war and describes her painful experience of losing her husband and a child in a car accident. She narrates that ―[a]fter the auto accident that killed them, she had gone back to college, there to decide what else she might do with her life‖ (8). In order to heal from her loss, she learned to focus on the future; therefore, she returned to college. Very soon she seems to acknowledge that the old world before the nuclear war has vanished and so there is no point in being overly attached to the past. There is only the future and Lilith is granted a chance by the Oankali to participate in the re-creation of the future. Nikanj, Lilith‘s closest Oankali friend, tells her that ―[y]ou‘ll begin again. We‘ll put you in areas that are clean of radioactivity and history.

You will be something other than you were‖ (34). Nikanj does not speak only about the new beginning of a civilization, but also about Lilith‘s new identity. Lilith does not want to restore the old world and its values and hierarchies that only mean oppression. As an

African American woman she had to face her subordinate position in the patriarchal society. Now, she is given a chance to be equal with the extraterrestrials and as a mother of the new civilization, she can be even more powerful than them. This would mean a new future for her. However, as race would not matter anymore, it is not very clear whether it is possible to speak about Afrofuture as proposed by Mark Dery in ―Black to the Future‖.

Since Lilith’s Brood views race as a concept that can cease to exist completely, it only supports the view that race is a social construct. The concept of race can be itself viewed as a science fiction. In the same interview where Mark Dery coined the term

Afrofuturism he mentions the fact that the colonized people who were abducted from their

34 motherland to become slaves have been in a way treated as aliens and eventually accepted the position of the Other (180). He explains that:

African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien

abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less

impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official

histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to

bear on black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee

experiment, and tasers come readily to mind). (180)

This sci-fi nightmare is actually the real history of black people. These people, who were stolen away from their world, were forced to accept their difference and understand it as a marker of their inferiority. Nevertheless, because of the diaspora in which black people find themselves and manage to live despite its causes, they have capacities to insure the continuance of human society (Morris 155).

This notion of being the Other through being abducted from one‘s place of origin to a different culture is further explored in the novels analyzed. Lilith from Lilith’s Brood and

Tan-Tan from Midnight Robber are also abductees. Lilith was abducted by the Oankali extraterrestrials who saved her before the life on Earth was destroyed by a nuclear war.

Tan-Tan was abducted from Toussaint by her father who was expelled to exile in New Half

Way Tree, an alternative dimension from where there is no way back. Similarly to Lilith and Tan-Tan, people whose family histories were influenced by slavery were toughened by this experience which shows their strength and determination to survive. As exemplified in

Midnight Robber, when Tan-Tan and her father are being transported to the exile on New

Half-Way Tree, she describes being ―trapped in a confining space, being taken away from home like the long time ago Africans‖ (74). Antonio does not tell Tan-Tan that they are

35 going to exile and they can never come back to perfect Toussaint and when she realizes the truth and sees the inhospitality of the new world into which she is thrown, she can ―feel her heart begin to harden against her daddy. […] She felt she didn‘t know him anymore‖ (77).

Because of being betrayed by her father, Tan-Tan is deeply hurt and a changed person. Yet, she knows that it is possible to survive in a strange land because her ancestors managed it, too.

De Witt Douglas Kilgore argues that ―Butler chose to write self-consciously as an

African American woman marked by a particular history‖ (353). She deals with the issues of race from a position of someone who has been shaped by it. By revisiting the history through the character of Dana she follows the development of what it has meant to be black in the U.S. society. Nalo Hopkinson‘s characters are also employed as means to convey certain futuristic visions on the race discourse. Their visions are relatively alike as they both propose a necessity to overcome the concept of race. In this way, they destabilize the interlocking categories of race, gender, and class and give chance to an independent self- definition. Nevertheless, both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson imagine societies where race does not form a basis for oppression and discrimination, but only Nalo

Hopkinson clearly expresses that race should remain a part of one‘s personal history.

II.2. Race and Societies: Envisioning Safe Places

In Black feminism, the relationship of an individual to one‘s ancestry is not the only interesting aspect to be examined. The relation of an individual to his/her self and its positioning within the world, society, or community is also important. In Black Feminist

Though (1990), Patricia Hill Collins emphasizes the importance of self-definition where race and gender play a significant role. She states that:

36

Extended families, churches, and African-American community

organizations are important locations where safe discourse potentially can

occur. […] By advancing Black women‘s empowerment through self-

definition, these safe spaces help Black women resist the dominant ideology

promulgated not only outside Black civil society but within African-

American institutions. (101)

The creation of ―safe spaces‖ (Collins 101) shows that the concept of independent and empowering self-definition lies at the centre of Patricia Hill Collins‘s feminist thought. As

Kenneth D. Allan summarizes in Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory:

Visualizing Social Worlds (2010), Patricia Hill Collins proposes four tenets of the Black feminist epistemology—subjects are turned into objects of study, dialogue rather than argument, ethics of caring, and personal accountability (3). In other words, she argues that a subject of research, a member of a certain group, is the best researcher for studying one‘s own group. She turns her attention inwards and acknowledges her position within the analyzed group. Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson present their main women characters as individuals who are self-conscious and who perceive themselves as individuals within a community. They define themselves in relation to what or who surrounds them and how these surrounding things/individuals define themselves in terms of race.

The novels I analyze can be divided into three groups according to how each society approaches the category of race and to which extent they recreate ―safe spaces‖ (Collins

101). Besides paying attention to how these societies deal with the issue of race, I also examine their proposal of a utopian or dystopian world. Kindred is set in a persistently racist society, whereas Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring in a post-racial

37 society, and Lilith’s Brood presents a ―hybrid society‖ (Killgore and Samantrai 356). Under the term persistently racist society, I imagine a dystopian society governed by racism. The term post-racial society suggests that the previous existence and significance of race played an important part in human history, but the constraints posed by the category of race have been overcome, but not forgotten. As to the hybrid society, De Witt Douglas Kilgore explains that:

Butler does not write fiction that faithfully and joyfully represents familiar

black communities as a condition of the future. Even when they do not

include extraterrestrials, the communities she creates are always hybrid,

composed of individuals and families who share oddities across the range of

more conventional phenotypic differences: African, European, Asian.

Butler's fantasies posit racial hybridity as the potential root of good family

and blessed community life, a preference she attributed to her experience

growing up in places not strictly segregated by race. (355-6)

At first, the post-racial society and the hybrid one seem alike. They both depict various people or groups of people living next to each other and/or together without seeing any difference between them that could provide a basis for oppression. However, as illustrated below, I observe that Nalo Hopkinson does not propose to create hybrid societies, but exclusively black communities who are still recovering from the effects of racial oppression. In an interview with Gregory Rutledge, Nalo Hopkinson says that ―the experience of slavery is a huge cancer in the collective consciousness […] and the ripple effects […] still continue, and they touch the past, the present, and the future‖ (592). She refuses the opinion that the African American ―have ‗gotten over it‘‖ (Rutledge 592) and therefore, she projects the experience of slavery to her worlds in the future.

38

I assert that in Kindred a persistently racist society is depicted, because a major part of the novel takes place on a plantation of the antebellum Maryland. The novel shows how difficult and cruel the life there was for the slaves, but also for free people of color. When

Dana goes back to the past, she has to blend in with other black people. It is too dangerous for a black person to stand out or even to speak up against masters. But it is too difficult for

Dana to completely deny that she grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as a free person, enjoying the freedom of speech by her writing and freedom of loving who she wants. Rufus warns her that she should realize her subordinate position and obey it. Otherwise, she would get into trouble. He says ―[d]addy always thought you were dangerous because you knew too many white ways, but you were black. Too black, he said. The kind of black who watches and thinks and makes trouble‖ (255). When she is trapped in the past and in the slavery for five years, she decides to run away to a free state, hoping that she would find at least some rest. However, having been caught and punished by whipping, Dana says ―I felt sweat on my face mingling with silent tears of frustration and anger. My back had already begun to ache dully, and I felt dully ashamed. Slavery was a long slow process of dulling‖

(182). Her whipping and the atrocities against the black people she has to witness change her view of herself as a person whose ancestors are both black and white.

Dana‘s hybrid ancestry again seems to contradict Killgore‘s and Samantrai‘s argument that ―Butler's fantasies posit racial hybridity as the potential root of good family and blessed community life‖ (356). Despite being partly black and partly white which makes her a hybrid (according to Killgore and Samantrai), Dana is not a part of any blessed community either in the 1820s or in the 1970s. It is quite the opposite, it puts her into a complicated position. She prefers to be a part of the black community rather than to be a

―white nigger‖ (165), which is what other characters sometimes call her. She wants to keep

39 distance from the violent white people, especially from Rufus, her great-great-grandfather.

But she has to help him anytime when he is in danger, otherwise she would never be born if

Rufus died too early. This poses a dilemma for Dana. Yet, her contempt for Rufus is stronger and, eventually, she kills him. Miraculously, she returns to the present, but is maimed: ―I was back at home […]. But I was still caught somehow, joined to the wall as though my arm were growing out of it—or growing into it. From the elbow to the ends of the fingers, my left arm had become a part of the wall. […] It was the exact spot Rufus‘s fingers had grasped‖ (261). She lost her hand in the past and to the past. This loss will always remind her of her personal and family history that she cannot escape.

The topic of race in Kindred is enhanced by juxtaposing the two different eras, the

1820s and the 1970s. While the antebellum era is depicted as violent, hostile, and cruel, the present is not as different as it should be in view of the fact that the race oppression is supposed to be overcome. At one point, Dana comes to the present for a brief moment and listens to the news on the radio where the situation in South Africa is discussed. Then she remarks:

South African whites had always struck me as people who would have been

happier living in the nineteenth century, or the eighteenth. In fact, they were

living in the past as far as their race relations went. They live in ease and

comfort supported by huge numbers of blacks whom they kept in poverty

and held in contempt. (196)

She experienced the nineteenth century personally and she knows exactly what the black people in South Africa must feel like. In fact, she feels as if the world has not changed since then. She might be free in the 1970s Los Angeles, but what if she did not travel back in time but to a different place on Earth, for example to South Africa? She would be in the

40 same position as someone who has to remain silent, be obedient, and acknowledge his/her subordinate position as in the nineteenth century. Therefore, the persistently racist society can be viewed as a critique of the contemporary world that balances on the edge of utopia and dystopia in terms of resolving the issues following from the category of race.

Contrary to the persistently racist society, the post-racial society depicts a more positive future for the marginalized as presented in Nalo Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber.

The beginning of Midnight Robber takes place on Toussaint, a planet that was colonized by people of African and Caribbean descent and is run by Granny Nanny, a female artificial intelligence that is sensible and caring. The most important historical event of Toussaint is when the Marryshow Corporation nation ships landed on Toussaint, which is commemorated annually by a traditional carnival called Jonkanoo. When Tan-Tan is putting on a carnival hat for the Jonkanoo, her nursie reminisces:

Long time, that hat woulda be make in the shape of a sea ship, not a rocket

ship, and them black people inside woulda been lying pack-up head to toe in

they own shit, with chain round them ankles. Let the child remember how

black people make this crossing as free people this time. (21)

The world of Toussaint is penetrated by Caribbean and African oral histories, but race is not explored as a contemporary issue there. Race issues are addressed only as a matter of fact that happened in the past, thus suggesting that race is not a pressing issue anymore and that Toussaint managed to establish a post-racial society. The story about her people‘s sufferings scares Tan-Tan and makes her feel sorry for them, because she is not personally familiar with any kind of oppression based on one‘s skin color. She does not realize how

(ir)relevant this category is for her own identity until she and her father are expelled from her birth planet Toussaint to go to an exile dimension called New Half Way Tree, where

41 she is no longer a majority but she meets different, strange-looking creatures whom she does not understand or resemble.

At the beginning of her exile at New Half Way Tree, Tan-Tan realizes that it is a completely different world than Toussaint. It is a place where all the mythical creatures from African and Caribbean stories live. Soon, she befriends Chichibud, a douen, and his family. Douens are described as:

The children who‘d died before they had their naming ceremonies. They

came back from the dead as jumbies with their heads on backwards. They

lived in the bush. Tan-Tan looked at the douen‘s head, then its feet. They

seemed to attach the right way, even though its knees were backwards. (93)

Apparently, she is not afraid of who they are, but what they look like. Despite their odd appearance, she does not discriminate these creatures. Moreover, she recognizes that they are better and more moral creatures than her people when Chichibud and his family provide a shelter and a safe place for her after she kills her father Antonio in self-defense because he had been repeatedly sexually abusing her since she was nine. Chichibud compassionately tells Tan-Tan:

Oonuh tallpeople been coming to we land from since, and we been keeping

weselves separate from you. […] Tonight, that go change, Tan-Tan. I taking

you far away, where Junjuh Town people can‘t find you. […] Understand

the trust I placing in your care, doux-doux. Understand that I doing it to save

your life, but you have to guard ours in return. (174)

Similarly to Dana who feels alienated from the white people of the nineteenth century and her white ancestors, Tan-Tan realizes that the people of New Half Way Tree, who were expelled from Toussaint because they committed some crime, are aliens for her. They only

42 make her suffer. Therefore, she renounces being a part of the ―tallpeople‖ community and joins a community of the douens, the mythical creatures. Eventually, Tan-Tan also becomes a myth – a Robber Queen, whose story is similar to the one of the Midnight Robber.

One can propose that Midnight Robber‘s depiction of the society on New Half Way

Tree is similar to the one in Lilith’s Brood, where the cross-breeding of people with the

Oankali results in the creation of a hybrid society. However, in Midnight Robber, the mythical creatures are born from the oral tradition of Caribbean and African people, whereas in Lilith’s Brood a completely new fictional species is introduced. The notion of difference in Midnight Robber is negotiated on the basis of what was known, but not believed it could exist. This aspect is more visible in Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber, while

Butler offers a completely different, unknown, unique version of the future, because she transgresses the category of race by creating a completely new species that connects both human history and the Oankali history.

In ―A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler,‖ De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu

Samatrai revise Octavia E. Butler‘s contribution to the discussion of race and highlight her attempt to create hybrid societies. They argue that the ―Butlerian hybridity‖ is a quest to recast humanity as a species and invent characters alternated by some kind of mutation

(Kilgore 355). This undoing and redoing of humanity is an embodiment of Octavia E.

Butler‘s view of utopia as far as race is considered.

Kilgore and Samatrai examine the Butlerian hybridity on an example of the whole society in Octavia E. Butler‘s Paternist series (1976-84). The same hybridity can be seen in the Lilith’s Brood, especially as exemplified by Lilith. Lilith is a young resolute African

American woman who was abducted from Earth at the last moment, just before the life on

Earth was eradicated because of many political conflicts. She is kept in suspended sleep by

43 her abductors/saviors, the Oankali extraterrestrials. They choose her to become a trainee to a group of humans that will be returned to Earth, but only after these humans mate with the

Oankali, which would result in the emergence of a completely new species. In Latin, this process is called xenogenesis, which was originally the title of the Butler‘s trilogy.

However, the 2000 edition was renamed from Xenogenesis to Lilith’s Brood.

Octavia E. Butler proposes an emergence of a new hybrid society because she is convinced that it is the only way to overcome racial and other discrimination. Overcoming various kinds of discrimination is a topic that Hoda M. Zaki explores in her article ―Utopia,

Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler.‖ Zaki explores how

Octavia E. Butler imagines utopian and/or dystopian society. At the same time, she takes into account the impact of the 1960s and 1970s in terms of African American literary production and the impact of Black feminism (239). Zaki claims that Octavia E. Butler emphasizes inherent need of humans for hierarchy and creation of the Other. She explains that ―the end of discrimination must coincide with the rise of some kind of similar discrimination based upon biological differences, which accordingly continue to play a role in future social orders‖ (241). In other words, Octavia E. Butler is skeptical about human ability to ever tolerate differences and not assign them any value. Oppression based on race can be diminished, but it would have to be replaced by something/someone that could take over the position of the Other.

Zaki mentions that introduction of new biological differences could erase racial discrimination (241). As the text suggests, Lilith‘s humanity is altered – she is provided with more strength, which results in her body looking more masculine. Moreover, she is given power to re-shape the walls of a space ship. When she starts awakening other people, who are to be trained, they immediately fear her power and rebel against her. Although she

44 still has the human appearance, unlike the Oankali, she is already thought to be too different psychically. She only finds companions among people who were in any way marginalized and deprived of power back on Earth. Lilith selects Joseph, an Asian

Canadian, to be her partner. She could have selected anyone else, a former police officer

Curt, a muscular man (unlike Joseph) who could fight in support of her authority, but who could as well fight against it. And that also happens, because Curt‘s identity of a white authoritative man is challenged by his subordination to Lilith. The point is that Lilith is bringing the marginalized under her protective wings and thus empowers them. Later, these people create a community and accept the Oankali‘s help to return life on Earth. However, it is life that inherits something from human species and something from the Oankali, but the offspring of Lilith‘s group would never be entirely one or the other.

II. 3. The New Mestiza in African American Science Fiction

Octavia E. Butler posits racial hybridity and hybridity of species as a potential for ending the oppressive effects of the interlocking categories of race, gender, and class.

Although Zaki argues that ―human propensity to create the Other can never be transcended‖

(241), I observe that Lilith is neither human—the normal, nor Oankali—the other. Her position is exactly in the middle. This position in-between can actually lead to a successful creation of a society without discrimination of any kind.

This aspect of Butler‘s proposition of hybridity, represented by Lilith in Lilith’s

Brood, correlates with Gloria Anzaldúa‘s term ―the new mestiza‖ proposed in her work

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldúa uses this term for a new person of a new cosmic race bereft of all confining categories, because there is too many of them and none of them really matters. She argues that we are all ―hybrid progenies‖

45

(Anzaldúa 99). Furthermore, she adds that ―[f]rom this racial, ideological, cultural and biological crosspollinization, an ‗alien‘ consciousness is presently in the making—a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands13‖

(99). Lilith represents a being at the border between human and alien civilizations. She is not fully accepted by the remaining humans or by the Oankali either because she is lacking their abilities. Yet, she is the most important being for ensuring the future of life on Earth.

She is a mediator, similarly to Anzaldúa who says that ―[m]any feel that whites should help their own people rid themselves of race hatred and fear first. I, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as mediator‖ (107). Applied to Lilith, one can substitute the whites for humans as such who need help in overcoming fear and hatred towards another species, the Oankali. Despite Lilith‘s position of a prisoner held on a space ship by the Oankali, a higher purpose and a spiritual elevation give her a sense of freedom, power, and responsibility.

Although Octavia E. Butler‘s novels were published before the term of

Afrofuturism was coined, it is possible to track how her texts are related to this term. It can be assumed that she is very careful not to give any definitive answers in the discourse of race in her novels. In an interview with Frances Beal, Octavia E. Butler says that she does not attempt to ―project an ideal society‖ (239) because she ―[does not] believe that imperfect humans can form a perfect society‖ (239). She rather feeds the discussion about the possibilities and encourages one‘s reflecting on one‘s own position and thus identity.

De Witt Douglas Kilgore ponders on Octavia E. Butler‘s approach to Afrofuturism and states that ―she places an afro-centric sensibility at the core of her narratives but does not

13 Gloria Anzaldúa‘s use of the expression ―B/borderlands― can be interpreted literally and also metaphorically. 46 project the social or political survival of traditionally racialized communities. Rather, the segregations she imagines most powerfully are the fantastic substitutes‖ (357) embodied by hybrid beings. In other words, Octavia E. Butler constructs communities through a hybrid character of Lilith and thus avoids assigning any meaning to race. She rather focuses on an individual and how she or he deals with difference in terms of species.

In conclusion, Afrofuturism is embedded in science fiction written by Octavia E.

Butler and Nalo Hopkinson as both authors invent new worlds where racial issues are

(about to be) resolved, because a different social order is established. The analyzed texts are visionary because of the depiction of different social orders, which allows them to promote people of African or Caribbean origin. However, the societies are not perfect because race is not the only category to be ended. There are still many other categories (such as gender or class) that complicate the lives of the African Americans. Nevertheless, Afrofuturism proposes that there is always hope for better times for the oppressed.

Furthermore, the relationship to one‘s ancestors was also explored in order to reveal the significance of one‘s roots in shaping one‘s identity. Putting an individual into a close contact with one‘s roots through oral history actually encourages pondering on one‘s position in society and leads to an embrace of the individual‘s roots. In relation to the discussion of one‘s roots, it is necessary to emphasize Patricia Hill Collins‘s insight into the process of self-definition again, as she proposes that an individual can be explored in relation to a certain community in which he or she lives (30). The individual is an object and a subject of a given environment. This fact enables the exploration of the category of race and its treatment within various types of societies where the main characters find themselves. Because Octavia E. Butler advocates an emergence of a hybrid community and

Nalo Hopkinson creates a post-racial society, it stems from the above analysis that race, as

47 a stigmatizing category, does not persist in the author‘s imagined worlds. As a result, the texts attempt to tear down one of the pillars that have been reproducing the oppressive forces against black people.

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III. Gender: Black Girls Are the Future

In the first chapter, I explored the concept of race in works by Octavia E. Butler and

Nalo Hopkinson through the lens of Afrofuturism and Black feminism. Recently, Susana

M. Morris published an article ―Black Girls Are from the Future: Afrofuturist Feminism in

Octavia E. Butler‘s Fledging‖ where she asserts that ―because much of Afrofuturism‘s transgressive politics align with the fundamental tenets of black feminist thought, […] it is critical to understand these epistemologies not only as related, but as […] in conversation with one another and potentially even symbiotic‖ (155). I agree with Susana M. Morris that these two theories benefit from each other as they revolve around the position of people with African descent who are often marginalized and thus contribute to keeping the discussion about race, gender, and class evolving. However, as the term itself suggests

Afrofuturism seems to be focusing more on the question of race, which overshadows Black feminist issues specifically related to gender. Therefore, in this chapter I am trying to examine gender issues while keeping the Afrofuturist and Black feminist tenets in mind.

Afrofuturism allows Black feminists to empower a black female subject in reality through the readers. The vision of the future constructed according to the Black feminist theories introduces the reader to the possibilities of the future. The imagined world can depict both utopian and/or dystopian society, but the important aspect is that the black female subject is at the centre of attention and it actively participates in the creation of the new imagined society. Their part in seeing to an ethic functioning of the society or fighting in order to fix it is certainly a demonstration of power. Nalo Hopkinson acknowledges that she writes powerful female characters in order to empower black women as she is trying to

―represent how we black women deal in the world, how we often try to save the world with babies on our hips and family at home that we have to look after‖ (Hopkinson in Watson-

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Aifah 169). She attempts to make a legend of a black woman in context of her everyday struggle. Therefore, the characters might serve as role models for young women. And yet, these black female characters need to be freed from the alien position, from the position of the Other imposed by race as well as by gender.

In the analyzed novels, femininity is depicted as a system of relations between

―female anatomy [and] social and historical construction of gender and self‖ (Zaki 240).

Femininity is not constructed only as opposed to masculinity and male characters, but also with regard to children characters and as related to other gender categories. But also female body related to child-rearing or being an object of sexual desire plays an important part in one‘s self-definition as a woman. Further, I discuss the depiction of femininity as (not) opposed to masculinity. Finally, I devote myself to the newly constructed gender categories like the third gender and Donna Haraway‘s concept of non-gender cyborgs.

Kindred and Brown Girl in the Ring are set in an environment more or less familiar to the reader. The plots of these two novels take place in the past and the near future; therefore the discussion of gender in these two novels reflects the current situation to a more visible extent. In this sense, these two novels also give impression of being more realistic than Midnight Robber and Lilith’s Brood, which allows the reader to recognize

―the social/cultural/economic critique‖ (Miller 339) embedded in science fiction. In Lilith’s

Brood, characters of third gender occupy an important place in the plot. Therefore, one has to deal with a number of characters whose identity is not determined by what is familiar.

Furthermore, it presents a new view on what we consider to be different and on the consequences of identity of the Other. In Black feminism, the position of the Other is frequently discussed in connection to the oppressive position of black women in society.

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One of the founding texts on this subject is Ann duCille‘s ―The Occult of True Black

Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies‖ published in 1994.

III.1. Recognizing the Woman Within

Patricia Hill Collins claims that self-definition is an important aspect of Black feminism (99) and, therefore, I focus on how the main characters define themselves in terms of gender. The identification with femininity should enable black women to find a collective voice. But what does it mean for them to be female? Based on which facts do they experience their femininity14 and, more importantly, how do black women in the analyzed novels define this concept as well as define themselves?

Hoda M. Zaki relates the discussion of race and gender in science fiction to

―differing critiques of the contemporary social order and differing images of utopia‖ (240).

In her article ―Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler,‖ she explores women-authored science fiction in the context of the women‘s movement since the 1960s and discusses features of feminist utopia in comparison with that depicted in

Butler‘s works. She asserts that Octavia E. Butler‘s works are concerned with ―nurturing, strong, and pacifist […] freedom-loving women‖ (246) by which she defines possible delimiters of femininity. I will now examine how else the major women characters can identify with being a woman.

14 The term femininity itself is often perceived as troubling as its content—what is and is not feminine—is mostly defined by the dominant group which is white patriarchy. Elizabeth R. Cole and Alyssa N. Zucker address this problem in their article ―Black and White Women‘s Perspectives on Femininity‖. They argue that various groups of people define femininity and other gender categories differently. Yet, only femininity defined by the dominant culture is valid and based on the deviations from their hegemonic femininity, those who do not succeed in meeting the normative requirements are perceived negatively and less feminine/masculine (1).

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In Lilith’s Brood, Lilith is a self-aware woman who has been toughened by life. She still remembers her life on Earth and misses her husband and son who died in a car accident. She was a devoted mother. Therefore, the loss of her family deeply hurt her and

―she [often] wept for them,‖ (78) seeing their eyes ―empty of recognition‖ (77). She identified with the role of a mother and a wife and so, when the Oankali give her another chance to have a family, she almost immediately seizes it. She finds the role of a mother empowering, which is illustrated in a change in her mind when the Oankali put a child boy named Sharad in the cell with her. Lilith says that ―Sharad was a blessing. […] She worried about him and wondered how to protect him,‖ (10) which keeps her mind occupied and makes her find a new purpose for her life.

Dorothy Allison points out that Octavia E. Butler often depicts female characters who are willing to sacrifice everything in order to protect her family and children (471) and that ―mother [functions] as the humanizing element in society‖ (471). Allison‘s central argument about motherhood in Octavia E. Butler‘s novels is that the novelist illustrates how ―motherhood can mimic paternalistic domination‖ (473). As a mother of Sharad, she feels empowered because she has power over the child. Later in the novel, she becomes a potential mother of the new civilization, which would give her power over the whole civilization to come. However, because of being female and because of her trust to the

Oankali, other humans refuse her help in teaching them survival skills and about the

Oankali. Some characters see her effort to help both humans and the Oankali as an act of superiority, which is for many male characters inacceptable. Therefore, Lilith meets with a violent resistance led by a former police officer named Curt. Thus, I assert that Lilith realizes femininity as a restriction to gaining power because of attempts of men to hold their superior position if not over the Oankali, then at least over the human women.

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In Midnight Robber, Tan-Tan becomes more perceptive of her femininity as she gets older and leaves her home planet Toussaint. The most obvious feature of femininity in

Tan-Tan‘s eyes is its physical demonstration. As a little girl she is astounded by her mother

Ione and her beauty. Ione is not a mother whose world would be centered around her child and she pays only little motherly love to Tan-Tan, which has a negative effect on Tan-Tan as it leaves her emotionally deprived. In addition to that, she does not know how to deal with being a mother when her father makes her pregnant.

When in exile on New Half-Way Tree, her father starts sexually abusing the nine- year-old Tan-Tan. At that point Tan-Tan realizes her femininity, because ―she was the spitting image of Ione‖ (141). She blames her body for imposing such terrible destiny on her and is tired of being an object of sexual desire of other men, including her father. She says ―you could rule man easy, with just one thing. Sometimes she wished for something more, [someone] whose eyes met hers and who talked to her face, not her bubbies‖ (151).

In order to cope with the trauma of sexual abuse, Tan-Tan develops two inner voices—

Good Tan-Tan and Bad Tan-Tan. The Bad Tan-Tan is convinced that it is her fault that

Antonio projects her mother into her, whereas the Good Tan-Tan is the suffering voice who is trying to figure out how to prevent Antonio from abusing her. The Good Tan-Tan does not accept the position of a victim, but of a fighter. Thanks to the Good Tan-Tan who kills her father, she flees from the Junjuh village to live with the douens, where she manages to make peace with her femininity. And so, when Tan-Tan at the end of Midnight Robber says

―[s]oon [whispering to her belly] I take one life and I just safe two‖ (327), she speaks about forgetting the Bad Tan-Tan and saving the Good Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen and her baby.

It stems from the depiction of Tan-Tan that femininity can be, and often is, sexually

53 objectified. But as Tan-Tan proves right, the fight of a woman can end well if she embraces her ―enemy,‖ her female body.

As exemplified in Kindred, femininity is a delimiter of a black woman‘s opportunities. In addition, femininity is viewed as a lack of capabilities by other men. The main protagonist Dana, who lives in the 1970s, experiences her femininity based on what other people expect of her. At that time, it was expected of a woman to have a job suitable for women—an accountant, ―a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher‖ (Kindred 55), to have a husband and children and take care of them (Rowell 51). But Dana wants to be a writer, which is not a job a lot of people, especially her family, would approve of. And, despite being married to Kevin, she is not particularly eager to take care of the household and have children either. Moreover, her husband Kevin often perceives her as a vulnerable woman who needs his, a white man‘s protection. More often than not Kevin tells her to ―‗be careful,‘ […] unwittingly echoing Rufus‖ (91).

She is aware of the dangers that she has to face when she travels to the 1820s

Maryland, but it is her fight and no one can help her because of being black and a woman.

For this reason, she is considered to be a slave and a property that does not deserve to be treated as a human being, but can be exploited economically and sexually. As opposed to

Tan-Tan, Dana does not realize her femininity because of her body, but because other people have only little faith in her and her capabilities.

On the other hand, Brown Girl in the Ring shows how Ti-Jeanne experiences her femininity by being a single mother of an unwanted child. Ti-Jeanne admits that she does not identify with her role as a mother. At the same time, she feels strong enough to take responsibility for her and her baby‘s life. She leaves Tony because of ―all her worries about whether Tony would be able to help her provide for the child‖ (73) and rather goes to live

54 with her grandmother Gros-Jeanne because she feels more secure in a female community.

Opposed to Dana, who refuses to be perceived as an object to be protected, Ti-Jeanne recognizes that the protector—man is in fact an embodiment of threat. Thus, she chooses to stay with other women who can protect her more efficiently than men.

Interestingly, all four novels analyzed here present strong-willed female characters who have to deal with difficult situations, such as unplanned motherhood, being a prisoner, a slave, or an outsider because of their gender. Their femininity complicates their situations rather than helps them. At first, the female characters seem to be easy targets for the male protagonists. Women being easy targets of violence mirror the position of women in our reality. Butler and Hopkinson develop the stories of the female characters and present them as enduring fighters. Thus, both Butler and Hopkinson acknowledge the complexity and limits of being black and a woman. However, the hierarchical order according to either race or gender is an issue that the Black feminists and Afrofuturists are trying to overcome by raising a dialogue about these issues. As bell hooks puts it, speaking about the reality of black womanhood helps to ―awaken a critical consciousness‖ (Talking Back 30).

Another important aspect in discussion of femininity is the relationships women establish to each other. All the major women characters of the analyzed novels acquire a special relation to other women or the third gender individuals.15 These newly acquired friendships help the women characters to deal with difficult situations in which they find themselves. In consequence, they create a sort of sisterhood or a (half-)feminine community as the third gender is both masculine and feminine, yet not specifically either at the same time.

15 In Lilith’s Brood, Octavia E. Butler refers to ooloi as the third gender, therefore I adopt this expression. However, I do not imply that masculinity is hierarchically the second or the first gender. 55

This kind of sisterhood regardless of any differences—differences between species as in science fiction or difference of race, class, sexuality, is deemed important. Bell hooks argues that it is necessary for women to establish positive relationships with each other (17) in order to create powerful sisterhood. In her Feminism Is for Everybody (2000), she says that there are attempts to establish Utopian sisterhood, but these attempts cannot meet with success until women stop fighting against each other (3). At the same time, she acknowledges that even individuals who identify with the same gender category fight and oppress each other within that category because race, class, sexuality, and other delimiting categories come to play (3). Until this fight is overcome, it is not possible to establish a

(utopian) society that would not be oppressive.

In Brown Girl in the Ring, Ti-Jeanne comes to live with her grandmother where she feels safe and protected. Living with her grandmother Gros-Jeanne is beneficial for her because she teaches her African Caribbean shamanism, which provides Ti-Jeanne with immense power to protect not only herself and her baby, but she also manages to save the whole city centre from local mafia boss Rudy.

In Kindred, Dana meets her African American ancestor Alice thanks to her unexplained time-travels. Dana acknowledges that she is blood-related to Alice which deepens their relationship. Yet, Dana has to let Rufus, her white ancestor and an owner of a

Maryland plantation, rape Alice, so that Dana can be born in the future. At one point, Dana acknowledges that ―Alice was like a sister‖ (180). Despite the omnipresent shadow of a necessary betrayal from her side, Dana becomes a part of the female slave community that takes care of the household, in addition to her work in the fields.

Lilith’s Brood and Midnight Robber both depict a close friendship between a human and another species. In Lilith’s Brood, one sees that Lilith becomes very close with an

56 ooloi, the third gender extraterrestrial, called Nikanj. Nikanj helps Lilith to overcome her fear of and distrust towards the Oankali extraterrestrials. Tan-Tan in Midnight Robber relies on a help of her befriended female douen Abitefa. Douens are creatures from Caribbean oral tradition. Not only do they differ from humans in their appearance, but the douen males and females are radically different from each other, too. The female douens, called hinte, look like large birds16. Apparently, she is not afraid of who the douens are, but more of what they look like, which is true also of Lilith‘s initial suspicion towards the Oankali.

When Lilith has spent quite some time living with the Oankali, she says ―[s]uprising how quickly the Oankali had become people to her. But then, who else was there?‖ (58). Thus, it is just a question of time before Tan-Tan and Lilith get used to the new species and accept it as equal.

Another result of positive close relationships between women is that the position of the Other can be dismantled if women engage in sisterhoods where differences between race, class, sexuality, etc. are no longer obstacles. Butler and Hopkinson aim at writing from the position of a black woman and render the theme of self-definition as central for the discussion of the past, the present, and the imagined future where the black woman is no longer the Other, the marginalized figure perceived in a negative light.

For many readers, science fiction is about the Other represented by (strangely looking) aliens. It is interesting to ask who the alien figure is and invite Black feminism to the discussion. Besides race, the position of the Other also signifies that ―the female‘ in patriarchal society is already constituted as alien; […] ‗to be human is to be male‘‖ (Barr in

16 Tan-Tan scrutinizes one of the female douens looking at ―the bird feet, so like douen feet. At how the fronds of her feathers resembled the long hair on the douen pickney-them‖ (182). The hinte, the female douen is different from her male counterpart that look like a rather small creatures with eyes on ―either side of its head, not in front of its face like people eyes. It had two arms like them, with hands [and] swollen fingertips [and legs] thin and bent backwards‖ (92). 57

Roberts 79). Octavia E. Butler challenges this female/male dichotomy by placing Lilith, an

African American woman, in contrast to Nikanj, a third gender Oankali in Lilith’s Brood.

De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai state that ―Butler undermines a number of stable binaries that organize our world‖ (358) by inventing a different view on gender not as a dual category of male and female. By constructing a new category available for the determination of a self, Butler seems to offer a critique of the idea that woman should be perceived as alien.

The aim of Black feminism is to subvert the negative perception of women as aliens. Patricia Hill Collins explains that:

As the ‗Others‘ of society who can never really belong, strangers threaten

the moral and social order. But they are simultaneously essential for its

survival because those individuals who stand at the margins of society

clarify its boundaries. African-American women, by not belonging,

emphasize the sense of belonging. (70)

The sense of belonging is represented in the need to create sisterhoods where an individual would feel safe and equal to other members. Moreover, by befriending the alien creatures, spirits and other fictional creatures, the women characters show their will to disregard features that differentiate them as humans from the less common figures such as the douens or the Oankali.

III.2. Controlling Images

The Black feminists are not writing against men or any other group of people (4) as bell hooks argues in an introduction to her Feminism is for Everybody (2000). However, others seem to be writing/speaking against black women. In her collection of essays

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Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks notices that another obstacle in ending sexism and other systems of oppression is the internalized oppression recreated by the oppressed subject itself (3). Therefore, women need to come to terms with their (feminine) identity and establish positive relationships with each other and, most importantly, they need to learn how to think positively of themselves. At the beginning of this chapter I mention the term controlling images. Patricia Hill Collins explains this concept as internalized oppressive images of black womanhood ―reflecting the dominant group‘s interest in maintaining Black women‘s subordination‖ (72). Why is the discussion of the controlling images as it is understood by Patricia Hill Collins so important that it has found its way into the science fiction literature?

The reason is that the controlling images of, for example, mammy or jezebel are not true representations of black women. Not only do they have a negative effect on how other people view black women, but such images also have a negative psychological effect on black women themselves. In science fiction novels of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo

Hopkinson, the negative controlling images are being challenged and dismantled, which results in liberation of the subject of black femininity.

Rebellion against the controlling images of black womanhood was first addressed by Patricia Hill Collins in the chapter ―Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling

Images‖ of her Black Feminist Thought and she identifies them as images or stereotypical ideas about a person which are based on race, gender and sexuality, or economic situation and which have oppressive effect on the person in question (69). Collins argues that

―[t]hese controlling images are designed to make racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural, normal, and inevitable parts of everyday life‖ (69).

As these controlling images are accepted as a normal and common thing, in effect they not

59 only discriminate but also humiliate and degrade, which enforces the binary thinking in terms of the One and the Other. In other words, due to these controlling images black women are often pushed to a marginalized position of the Other.

Patricia Hill Collins recognizes the consequences of continuous reproduction of these controlling images of black womanhood charged with negativity and proposes a rebellion against them which should result in redemption of black womanhood (74).

Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson write their novels in favor of destroying the controlling images because they depict black female characters in a way that at first can evoke the stereotypical images of matriarch or jezebel only to challenge them and eventually deny them. This leads to the empowerment of the black female subject in science fiction and to the independent (and more positive) self-definition.

It follows from the previous description of how the main protagonists understand their femininity that motherhood is an important aspect of their reality. Patricia Hill Collins asserts that the controlling images of black womanhood are defined also in relation to motherhood and sexuality (84). While the images of a mammy or a Black matriarch embody a mothering activity, the images of a Black lady or a jezebel are linked to one‘s sexual identity and sexual activity. Patricia Hill Collins deals with the problem of continuous reproduction of these controlling images of black womanhood, which are felt as negative, and proposes a reaction to them, which should result in a more positive perception of black womanhood (74).

Some of the controlling images are challenged in Brown Girl in the Ring. In many ways, Ti-Jeanne‘s grandmother Gros-Jeanne resembles to a Black matriarch. Collins says that ―[w]hile the mammy typifies the Black mother figure in White homes, the matriarch symbolizes the mother figure in Black homes. Just as the mammy represents the ‗good‘

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Black mother, the matriarch symbolizes the ‗bad‘ Black mother‖ (75). Due to Gros-

Jeanne‘s healing and shamanist abilities, the whole community of the decaying Toronto city centre perceives her as a central and resolute figure. Some people fear her because of her shamanist abilities and spread rumors about her being a ―witch‖ (63). However, she is a good woman who selflessly helps others who deserve it. Collins continues by saying that

Black matriarch is a woman ―who failed to fulfill [her] traditional ‗womanly‘ duties at home‖ (75). This argument can at first seem valid as Gros-Jeanne fails to take care of her own daughter Mi-Jeanne, who goes insane because she has inherited the shamanist gift of foreseeing. However, because she feels she failed as a mother, she devotes even more attention to her granddaughter Ti-Jeanne. Gros-Jeanne has been toughened by life in a dystopian future world where only the strong ones can survive. Thus, Gros-Jeanne can seem harsh but she is only trying to save herself, her family, and her community.

Collins perceives the controlling images to be constructed around the African

American woman‘s sexuality and motherhood (84). In Midnight Robber, the character of

Ione, Tan-Tan‘s beautiful and unfaithful mother, is perceived negatively because of not fulfilling her role as a mother. When Tan-Tan is born, Ione gives it ―one dry kiss on the tiny cheek, and that was that for mother-love‖ (46). Thus, the text suggests that Nalo

Hopkinson does not only challenge the controlling image of the so-called jezebel, but she also revises the role of parent-child relationship. Motherhood is often too eagerly claimed to be an essential part of femininity, as Giselle L. Anatol asserts in her article ―Maternal

Discourses in Nalo Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber‖. She argues that ―Hopkinson rejects the convention that to birth a child is automatically to love the child; perhaps she attempts to reformulate gender roles beyond the notion of mother as naturally emotional nurturer,

61 father as material provider‖ (5). This fact illustrates how various kinds of oppression of black women are interrelated.

When Ione cheats on Antonio, it is not because of her sexual appetite that is attributed to the image of jezebel (Collins 80) but because she is desperately in love with

Antonio who as a mayor is too busy to return her love. Ione sometimes feels that ―she could have paraded naked through Antonio‘s office with three of her lovers and he wouldn‘t notice‖ (46). And so emotionally and sexually deprived Ione, who is actively trying to attract her husband‘s attention, seems to be a ―symbol of deviant female sexuality‖ (Collins

83) as opposed to ―the cult of the true White womanhood‖ (Collins 83). To overcome the notion of Ione being a jezebel, one has to sympathize with her and understand her frustration of not being loved by Antonio. Therefore, she finds a substitute for him—her lover Quashee. When Antonio challenges Quashee to a duel, Ione is flattered by the two men fighting over her. However, because Antonio kills Quashee, he is expelled to exile and

Ione is left devastated and alone.

There have been attempts to define racial and gender differences scientifically, which renders these categories as being very speculative, yet deeply rooted. In Kindred,

Dana grew up in the second half of the 20th century, which reflects her attitudes towards and beliefs about both race and gender. At one point, Dana‘s great-great-grandmother Alice tells her that ―[t]hey be calling you mammy in a few years‖ (167) because of Dana‘s attitude to Rufus, her white ancestor. She spends a lot of time with Rufus, reading to him or teaching him. Thus, she is tolerated in the white household and accepted by the slave community, because she helps a number of slaves to heal thanks to her basic knowledge of nursing. Dana is appalled to be called mammy, which is one of the stereotypical views of black womanhood, one of the controlling images. A mammy is described as a ―faithful,

62 obedient, domestic servant, […] who embodies the dominant group‘s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite white male power‖ (Collins 74). It sheds an interesting light on Dana as a 1970s independent and liberal woman, who would never be called mammy in the present, but due to her learned liberalism she is perceived as neither black by the fellow slaves nor white by the master. This mirrors the negative attitude of other African Americans and white society to Black womanhood (hooks 3).

Dana is explicitly called a ―mammy‖ (176), but there are other characters in

Kindred that ―could have been called mammy‖ (Beal 15). However, Octavia E. Butler intentionally never uses the word for Sarah, a slave woman who runs the household and pushes other slaves to work. Sarah does not want to abuse other slaves, she only does what is necessary and if there is work to be done, everyone should participate. Octavia E. Butler comments that ―[Sarah] absorbed a lot of the garbage but she is still her own person,‖ (Beal

15) which suggests that one should first try to understand the situation in which a black woman finds herself and not judge her by stereotypical images imposed by the dominant white society.

It follows from the above analysis of the rebellion against the controlling images by female protagonists that men, regardless of race, promote the reproduction of the controlling images because they never defend or try to understand the female protagonists.

Therefore, another important aspect in Black feminism that needs to be examined when analyzing science fiction novels is the relationship between men and women.

The most apparent distinction between male and female characters in all the analyzed novels is that men are intrinsically more violent than women that find themselves in dead-end situations and have to use violence to protect themselves, their offspring and/or their communities. Women do not use violence to gain dominance over another person or

63 group of people. Moreover, these villains are strongly against everything that is different or cannot be explained rationally. They are suspicious of everything that is challenging their position of the empowered except for Rudy. Rudy, a villain from Brown Girl in the Ring, is not skeptical about the Caribbean magic that Gros-Jeanne taught him. He realizes that it could empower him as it empowered Gros-Jeanne and so he takes advantage of Caribbean shamanism in order to rule the whole city centre of Toronto.

Both Dorothy Allison in ―The Future of Female: Octavia E. Butler‘s Mother Lode‖ and Hoda M. Zaki in ―Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia

Butler‖ observe this biased depiction of violence in Octavia E. Butler‘s Lilith’s Brood on the example of Lilith and in Kindred on the example of Dana. Zaki argues that Butler assigns the violent behavior of men to genes, bringing in the radical feminist theory of Julia

Kristeva and Luce Irigaray (241). Zaki explains that ―to accept Butler‘s notion that males are genetically (i.e., inherently) more violent than women is to accept an essentialist view of human nature‖ (241). In addition, Zaki asserts that ―the violence [Butler‘s] female characters commit is done for survival and defense,‖ (241) which can be detected also in the novels by Nalo Hopkinson.

Lilith is supposed to awaken other humans who were saved by the Oankali and are now in a suspended sleep on their spaceship. Obviously, humans do not believe Lilith that they are not some war prisoners but the chosen ones to recreate life on Earth. At one point, after being attacked by one of the humans, Lilith defends herself. However, because the

Oankali slightly altered her genes, she has more physical power that others and so when

Lilith strikes back, Jean, the girl who attacked her is knocked ―unconscious, bleeding from her mouth‖ (146). Lilith is shocked by the power she now has, although she is angry with

Jean for attacking her. However, she cares for her as ―[s]he stayed with her until Jean had

64 regained consciousness enough to glare at Lilith. Then, without a word, Lilith left her‖

(146). Lilith rather remains silent because she is tired of fighting, but resolute to protect herself and the future of humankind. In this way, Lilith does not use violence in order to promote her personal interests, but rather to defend herself as well as the others.

As exemplified in Kindred, Dana also has to protect herself. Dana keeps returning to the past only on an occasion when her relative Rufus, a white master, is in danger. She knows she has to save him in order to ensure the continuance of her family line that would enable her to be born in the future. She is constantly in danger as she keeps returning to the

Maryland plantation during the antebellum period but never knows when she will die because of the harsh conditions of slavery or when she will return to the 1970s. Moreover, she has to struggle with her inner dilemma about saving Rufus who is slowly becoming more and more abusive white slave master or saving Alice, her African American ancestor, from Rufus. After Alice commits suicide because she cannot deal with Rufus‘s blind, but abusive love, Dana confronts Rufus and he attempts to rape her. In self-defense and in defense of other slaves, she stabs Rufus to death while thinking: ―[a] slave was a slave.

Anything could be done to her. And Rufus was Rufus—erratic, alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover‖ (260). It follows from the above examples, that both Kindred and Lilith’s Brood portray a biased depiction of violence where women use violence in order to protect themselves or their community (Zaki 246), not because they want to put someone in a subordinate position as, for example, Rufus, who attempts to rape Dana.

Another instance of male characters being violent and deceitful can be detected in

Nalo Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring. The author pays more attention to the development of female characters who, unlike men who are victims of drug abuse, alcohol,

65 organized crime, and other life-wrecking activities, deal with the issues actively. Ti-Jeanne seems to be a regular young girl who is struggling with quite common things such as love issues, being a single mother, sexual desire, etc. However, she changes throughout the novel as she has to face her enemies who are all masculine. Her biggest enemies are Rudy, the boss of Toronto mafia, and his drug-addicted flunkeys, but I also perceive Tony, her baby‘s father, to be her enemy. Tony is using Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother to get him out of his trouble, but he secretly plots against Gros-Jeanne. Tony‘s trouble is that he has to deliver a human heart to Rudy who will then sell it to a seriously ill governor. He does not want to kill anyone, but he is also determined to do whatever it takes to safe his own life.

When he is waiting for a protective ritual to be performed, he secretly tests Gros-Jeanne‘s blood type. In spite of the fact that Gros-Jeanne is trying to help Tony, he does not show his gratitude and rather comes up with a back-up plan. When he finds out that Gros-Jeanne would be a suitable donor,

[d]ismay and excitement wash[es] over him in equal proportions. Ti-

Jeanne‘s grandmother had the right blood type, the right body dimensions. If

her crazy scheme to save his ass didn‘t work, he might be forced to an

extreme solution to his problem. (71)

Therefore, he decides that if he has to deliver the human heart to Rudy, it would be Gros-

Jeanne‘s heart and he is mentally accepting this possibility. This shows his violent, weak and selfish personality. In this sense, the male characters are exposed in a light that shows them as villains who should be deprived of power. Since bell hooks speaks about the need to end sexism and patriarchy that follows from sexism, both Kindred and Brown Girl in the

Ring imply why the patriarchy should be put to its end.

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In general, it stems from the analyzed novels of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo

Hopkinson that science fiction provides space for critical comment on the reality as it challenges the negative stereotypes about black womanhood. The analyzed novels propose that it is important to realize in which situations black women sometimes find themselves because of oppression and injustice imposed on them by the dominant society or simply by life itself.

III.3. Affinity of Being a Black Woman

Since both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson depict male characters in a negative light, they draw attention to the position of a black woman in the society.

However, they do not stop here with their social and political critique. In their writing, they include some possible ways towards a partly utopian solution of gender and sexual oppression. One of the ways is the introduction of invented gender categories or gender- less categories.

Catherine S. Ramírez presents ways to resolve particular issues connected with oppression in her article ―Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia E. Butler and

Gloria Anzaldúa‖ published in Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. She asserts that

―[t]hrough her heroines, Octavia E. Butler challenges and relativizes masculinist notions of power. She redefines power and agency by theorizing a feminist, woman-of-color subject emblematic of Donna Haraway‘s ‗cyborg‘‖ (383). Her claim supports my argument that

Octavia E. Butler‘s aim, as well as Nalo Hopkinson‘s, is to overcome sexism that delineates the power division in our society. Ramírez draws attention to a woman of color in science fiction and links it to the concept of ―cyborg identity‖.

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―Cyborg‖ is a term first coined by Donna Haraway in her ―Cyborg Manifesto‖

(1991). In this manifesto, Donna Haraway reacts to the traditional notion of feminism that puts too much emphasis on identity politics and thus renders it as essentialist and pushed to a crisis when feminism will not have any unity around which to integrate. She asserts that

―there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition – affinity, not identity,‖ (4) and suggests focusing on kinship, on acknowledging a close relationship with entities of similar qualities, structures or features. In other words, she argues that identity is not an essence to be uncovered, but a construct, and that the categories according to which people interpret their identities are mere fictions. Therefore, she proposes the term

―cyborg identity,‖ which is explained as:

based on the concept of constructionism (i.e., anti-essentialism), position, or

‗place‘—as in ‗one‘s place in society‘ or one‘s displacement in/by society. It

reconceives of identity (a static and fixed essence) as position (within a

particular history, narrative, ideology, and/or social system). (Ramírez 384)

Haraway emphasizes the importance of positioning oneself within a society and the impact of (not) having power to choose which position to occupy. A subject can hold multiple positions, which suggests that a cyborg can be everything and nothing; the subject can see world from a number of different positions, e.g. from a position of a mother, a Caribbean, an immigrant, and many more.

Furthermore, Haraway is convinced that women of color are cyborgs in the real world. According to her, women of color embody a ―kind of postmodernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity‖ (Haraway 4) because they are deprived of the right to a stable and non-oppressive membership in the social categories of gender, race, and class due to their intersectional position. Ramírez explains that Haraway ―interrogates the

68 stability of social categories, such as ‗woman,‘ ‗white,‘ and ‗black,‘ and exposes them as social ‗fictions‘ (i.e., regulatory ideals)‖ (385). In general, Haraway throws into disarray the deeply rooted notion of social categories by proposing the concept of cyborg identity demonstrated through affinities.

Ramírez examines Octavia E. Butler‘s Wild Seed (1980) and looks for the instances of cyborg identity in the novel. The main character of Wild Seed called Anyanwu has a special ability to transform into various life-forms (and into any gender), which makes the character almost immortal as Anyanwu switches into another body after the present one gets old. Anyanwu‘s transformation is described as follows: ―With each human form, she assumes a different social and subject position (as a different social and subject position is imposed upon her), and, subsequently, she gains (and sometimes loses) a particular worldview‖ (385).

The same change in the worldview can be seen in Lilith’s Brood, too. Lilith has changed physically and psychically a lot since she was first awakened aboard the Oankali spaceship. This change was conditioned by the steadily warming relationship between her and the Oankali, because she no longer felt threatened by the aliens and she wanted to save the life on Earth and make it a better place to live. At the same time, her genes were slightly altered in order to enable her to fully use her bodily potential, her muscles, senses, and intuition. On top of this, her skin produces some kind of chemical that allows her to control the interior of the spaceship which has exclusively been the Oankali ability. What I am implying is that Lilith developed psychically because she adjusted to her environment, but she was also transformed into a different, yet unknown hybrid life-form. This fact changed her worldview and, as a result, she grows even more committed to saving the life on Earth and, despite protests of other humans, she accepts the Oankali condition of trading the

69 genes with humankind and thus creating a new species with new gender categories. Lilith‘s alteration by the Oankali technology proves that she is a cyborg character.

Nalo Hopkinson also invents a character based on which the concept of cyborg identity can be illustrated. Tan-Tan, the main protagonist in Midnight Robber, has to deal with sexual abuse by her father. Her cyborg identity becomes more apparent when she invents two alter-egos—Good Tan-Tan and Bad Tan-Tan. The girl says that ―she was Tan-

Tan the Robber Queen, […] the one who born on a far-away planet‖ (140). Robber Queen is the female version of Robber King, a traditional carnival figure and a ―metaphor for exile‖ (Hopkinson, ―Conversation‖). Having been exiled, Tan-Tan identifies with the

Robber King‘s story of how he was ―brought to a land full of strange-looking people, who‘d escape and become a robber in order to survive‖ (Hopkinson, ―Conversation‖). Tan-

Tan is also fighting for a survival and, in addition, she fights against any injustice done to the weak ones. Soon, the stories about Robber Queen start spreading and she wonders how

―they had grown out of her and had become more than her‖ (299). The stories about Tan-

Tan the Robber Queen are fictional, but Tan-Tan accepts them to be part of her. Donna

Haraway argues that ―[t]he cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience. […] This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion‖ (149). Thus, according to cyborg feminism, Tan-Tan is the future cyborg—a creature half real, half fictional. In order to deconstruct the gender categories, she oscillates between calling herself Robber Queen or Midnight Robber. Because one cannot recognize if Midnight Robber is a title for a man or a woman, it serves as a meeting point of the two gender categories Tan-Tan—half myth, half real being represents the meaning of the cyborg identity.

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Another point that Donna Haraway makes in her ―Cyborg Manifesto‖ is that it is necessary to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender (150). Octavia E. Butler does so in Lilith’s Brood when she introduces a third gender Oankali referred to as ooloi.

Because ooloi plays an important part in human-Oankali procreation, I would like to emphasize Octavia E. Butler‘s way of dealing with the reproduction process as a way to revise the categories of gender.

In ―Gender Is a Problem That Can Be Solved: Women‘s Science Fiction and

Feminist Theory,‖ Jane Donaweth notes that ―Octavia Butler‘s stories often make men and women equal by introducing an alien presence into the heterosexual binary‖ (118). The reader can observe this fact in the Lilith’s Brood trilogy where a third gender called ooloi appears. The Oankali genetically altered women, men, and ooloi so that they can reproduce only when all three genders are involved. This creates a three-fold sexual relationship, but not a three-fold partnership, because the male individuals are not expected to participate in a child‘s upbringing.

The removal of a male figure from family is another point that is addressed by the

Black feminists. Patricia Hill Collins criticizes the normativity of family pattern. She is against the assumption that ―black family structures are seen as being deviant because they challenge the patriarchal assumptions underpinning the traditional family ideal‖ (77) imposed by the dominant white society. According to her, not fulfilling the expectations of the dominant culture about family ideal is not a reason for inferiority, but most people internalize that argument. When Nikanj, an Oankali, Lilith‘s close friend and sexual partner talks to Lilith about the future of family, he says: ―[m]ost Human males aren‘t particularly monogamous. No construct males will be. […] Families […] are changing. A complete construct family will be a female, an ooloi, and children. Males will come and go as they

71 wish and as they find welcome‖ (260). It stems from Nikanj‘s words that gender categories will bring about also change in social order and its units, such as family. At the same time, it promotes motherhood to be one possible affinity (as Donna Haraway would see it) for an individual to identify with.

The children who come from these three-fold sexual relationships are called constructs in Lilith’s Brood. Nikanj describes to another human how Lilith has dealt with the restructuring of a family unit, saying:

In the first children, I gave Lilith what she wanted but could not ask for. I let

her blame me instead of herself. For a while, I became for her a little of what

she was for Humans she had taught and guided. Betrayer. Destroyer of

treasured things. Tyrant. She needed to hate me for a while so that she could

stop hating herself. And she needed the children I mixed for her. (300)

This Oankali acknowledges that parenthood (in this case motherhood) can have an empowering effect on an individual. What Octavia E. Butler does is that, by withdrawing a father figure from the parenthood, she rephrases sexism in an institution of family.

As quoted above, Jane Donawerth asserts that the presence of an alien renders male and female equal (118), but I notice that the male characters are actually depicted as unattached, independent, and almost completely isolated. On the previous pages I claim that a lot of the male characters in Kindred and Brown Girl in the Ring are written in a negative tone and/or as villains. In Lilith’s Brood, some of the male characters are not villains but they are being steadily pushed towards the margin in creation of the future life on Earth, which deprives them of their dominant position in society. They represent a necessary part in reproduction of the construct children, but they are not to be involved in their upbringing. And upbringing plays an important part in the creation of one‘s

72 worldview. Moreover, if the masculinity in the form of the father figure is not at hand for the child, but is in the child‘s life only as a fact, it supports Donna Haraway‘s argument that gender and the content of the term is unstable and irrelevant (150). Yet, one question remains and that is what significance the third gender will eventually gain in the institution of family. Will the third gender take over the male responsibilities? Octavia E. Butler does not answer this question, which leaves the discussion of whether the concept of gender in

Lilith’s Brood is treated as utopia or dystopia open. Nevertheless, Lilith’s Brood shows that

Lilith and the construct children resemble to Donna Haraway‘s definition of cyborg identities as fragmented, partial, and yet whole.

At first, the concept of cyborg can seem very technocratic and unreal, Donna

Haraway is right when she claims that ―we are cyborgs‖ (149). I explore this concept in relation to science fiction of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson because it is the most liberating concept that can be/is employed when discussing the depiction of black women in science fiction as well as in reality. Black women‘s restriction to participate in certain categories because of their race, gender, class, and other factors is not a handicap. It can ensure them to be the women of the future because of their cyborg identities.

To summarize this chapter, Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson put the black female subject at the centre of their writing by which they empower these characters and depict them as the bearers of the future. I explored the topic of black femininity, its definition and black women‘s identification with this concept. The self-identification with black femininity can have an empowering effect especially in the context of Black feminism that proposes to engage in positive relationships with other women. This can result in a creation of powerful sisterhoods which provide a nurturing sense of belonging and of security. Then, I explored the importance of rebellion against the controlling images

73 that render black womanhood as charged with negative stereotypes. The fact that Octavia

E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson challenge these stereotypical representations contributes to the general fight against them. Last, I explained how cyborg identities provide a new ways in liberating black women from their oppressive position. The cyborg feminism appears to be a way to resolve the issues of oppression and as much as the term might sound technocratic and fictional, the cyborg identities enable us to construct better realities where race, gender, and class are just unstable fictions that are drawing to a close.

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II.III. Class: From Dystopia towards Utopia

Besides race and gender, class is another point that is widely discussed by the Black feminists as it can work as an oppressive intersectional force in one‘s definition. The category of class is an important aspect that differentiates Black feminism from mainstream feminism as ―the white women‘s liberation movement is basically middle-class [because] very few of these women suffer the extreme economic exploitation‖ (Beale 120). White feminists managed to elevate themselves in the class hierarchy and they turned their focus on other issues. Bell hooks explains that ―as feminist movement progressed and privileged groups of well-educated white women began to achieve equal access to class power with their male counterparts, feminist class struggle was no longer deemed important‖ (37). That is to say that bell hooks directly addresses the point of departure of mainstream feminism because it professes a lack of inclusion of lower classes and women of color. Therefore,

Black feminism emphasizes the complicated position of a black woman that is caused by the interlocking character of race, gender and class.

The discussion of class is not only a distinctive feature in Black feminism, but also in science fiction where the class relations and their development are often related to classic utopian/dystopian literature (Jameson xi). Fredric Jameson, whose Archaeologies of the

Future: The Desire Called Utopia (2005) blends the discussion of science fiction with utopia and postmodernism, asserts that science fiction as well as utopia are ―profoundly political concepts‖ (xii) crucial for the imagination of possibilities of the future. As a

Marxist critic, Jameson pays attention especially to the economic aspects of envisioning the future. By stating that ―even our wildest imaginings are all collages of experience, constructs made up of bit and pieces of the here and now,‖ (xiii) he emphasizes the blurry

75 line between reality and fiction. Thus, the advantage of science fiction is not only that it provides a critique of the current society governed by racism, sexism, and classism, its contribution to the society and to the literature also lies in its potential to present solutions resulting in a better social arrangement.

It is necessary to point out that when speaking about class one does not address just the economic status of an individual, but also certain social markers related to it such as language, education or one‘s aspirations. In Feminism Is for Everybody, bell hooks argues that ―class [is] not simply a question of money‖ (39). She agrees with a lesbian feminist and human rights activist Rita Mae Brown, who suggests that:

Class is much more than Marx‘s definition of relationship to the means of

production. Class involves your behavior, your basic assumptions, how you

are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your

concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them, how you

think, feel, etc. (Brown qtd. in hooks 39)

Given that class shapes so many parts of one‘s identity, it can as well be a powerful tool for systematic oppression. Therefore, I find it important to examine the main characters of

Butler‘s Kindred and Lilith’s Brood and Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight

Robber in this context. Since the characters of Dana, Lilith, Ti-Jeanne and Tan-Tan, respectively, are members of a group marginalized by the mainstream society, be it real or imagined society, as they are women and black, they are also defined by their class membership. By portraying these main characters as influenced by class, it raises consciousness of this problem and can propose its solution.

First, I analyze the depiction of class in Butler‘s Kindred and Hopkinson‘s Brown

Girl in the Ring, arguing that these two novels present critical dystopias that revisit the past

76 and present mistakes made in order to avoid them in the future. In ―Post-Apocalyptic

Hoping: Octavia Butler‘s Dystopian/Utopian Vision,‖ Jim Miller asserts that ―Butler‘s critical dystopias force us to ‗work through‘ the dystopian before we can begin the effort to imagine a better world‖ (339). Building on this argument in the second part of this chapter,

I examine the portrayal of class in the societies in Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber and

Butler‘s Lilith’s Brood. Opposed to Kindred and Brown Girl in the Ring that are set in the past, the present and near future, the other two novels present completely new and possibly better worlds. Eventually, I argue that Midnight Robber and Lilith’s Brood portray almost utopian worlds in terms of class and thus propose a solution to many pressing issues experienced by black women because of classism. The last part of this chapter deals with issues that remain unsolved and keep affecting the black female protagonists because of their intersectional position.

IV.1. Society and Class: Learning from the Past and the Present

In an interview with Hyacinth M. Simpson, Nalo Hopkinson admits that when she was writing Brown Girl in the Ring, she came to a point when she did not know how the story should continue. But ―when [she] began to work out the economics of [the characters‘] situation, the story started to move again‖ (Simpson 111) as she was wondering where Ti-Jeanne and Gros-Jeanne live, how they pay for their apartment and other questions related to their economic situation. In this way, the topic of class became integrated in her first novel and has made an important comment on the contemporary society in which Hopkinson deliberately ―address[es] issues which affect young women‖

(Simpson 111). This is to say that Hopkinson admittedly provides a critique of the contemporary society.

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I argue that Butler‘s Kindred as well as Hopkison‘s Brown Girl in the Ring present critical dystopias. Critical dystopia is a term proposed by Jim Miller in his article ―Post-

Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler‘s Dystopian/Utopian Visions‖ and it denotes ―a post- apocalyptic hoping informed by the lessons of the past‖ (336) which ―reinvents the desire for a better world‖ (336). The subject of their critique that also contributes to the reproduction of disadvantages (and thus dystopia) for African Americans is the category of class. I start with the examination of class and its impact on the society in Butler‘s Kindred because this novel juxtaposes the society of the 1820s Maryland and the 1970s California.

It does not envision the future as it rather illustrates the shift from the past to the contemporary social arrangement. Secondly, I argue that the class difference in Brown Girl in the Ring is the main cause of Toronto‘s decay and thus it works as a warning against where our contemporary society is heading. By directly depicting flaws of our society and by ―posting warnings,‖ (Zaki 244) the texts encourage ―utopian hope that the readers will change the trajectory of their society‖ (Zaki 244).

In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler depicts class in the 19th and 20th century, which presents a convenient basis for comparison of reality with fictional societies. Based on this juxtaposition, a positive, but not ideal shift is presented in terms of the position of African

Americans in the society. As exemplified in Kindred, the 19th century life on a plantation holds more obstacles for African Americans than life in the 20th century as the 1820s

Maryland is marked by slavery and racial oppression. During slavery, African Americans were deprived of any freedom, both psychical and physical. The destiny of these oppressed and exploited people at that time and place was completely determined according to their skin color or the skin color of their parents. In the 1970s, African Americans have at least

78 some opportunity to try and establish themselves as members of the society although they are still being disadvantaged economically.

When Dana is transported from the 1970s to the 1820s Maryland, she challenges the class division of that era. She differs from other slaves radically because she is educated and, to everyone‘s surprise, she speaks Standard English. Therefore, she is perceived as an alien figure. Even the master of the plantation, Tom Weylin, cannot read, write, and count properly. At one point, a young slave boy Nigel asks her ―[w]hy do you talk like white folks? […] More like white folks than some white folks. […] You‘ll get into trouble, […]

Marse Tom already don‘t like you. You talk too educated and you come from a free state‖

(74). Tom Weylin sees Dana as a threat because she throws into disarray the rigid racial and social division of the society. For this reason he dislikes Dana and puts her through many humiliations to teach her where she belongs in the antebellum society.

Another aspect of class division in Kindred is the contrasting relationship of white and black women. Rufus‘s mother Margaret shares her husband‘s contempt for Dana. She also sees Dana as a threat and thus wants Danato realize her subordinate position. Dana is aware that she stands out of the crowd of slaves because of her liberality and education.

Margaret does not want Dana to use her education to her advantage because she herself does not have any. Moreover, Margaret‘s abusive behavior towards Dana and other slaves is motivated by her own lack of power as a woman for which she tries to compensate. She often stamps her feet and forces her husband to make decisions that would demonstrate her power at least over the slaves. For example, she insists on selling three slave children, so that she can have more spending money. Sarah, her cook and mother of the sold children, tells Dana:

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She wanted new furniture, new china dishes, fancy things you see in that

house now. What she had was good enough for Miss Hannah, […]. But it

wasn‘t good enough for white-trash Margaret. So she made Marse Tom sell

my three boys to get money to buy things she didn‘t need! (95)

This way, Margaret demonstrates her authority over the slaves and uses the money to affirm her subordinate social status, although she is just a poor girl who married a rich widower and thus promoted herself on the social ladder.

Shanon Smith in her article ―Black Feminism and Intersectionality‖ observes that

―[w]hile white middle-class women have traditionally been treated as delicate and overly emotional—destined to subordinate themselves to white men—Black women have been denigrated and subject to the racist abuse that is a foundational element of US society‖.

Dana describes Margaret as ―a poor, uneducated, nervous, startlingly pretty young woman who was determined to be the kind of person she thought of as a lady. That meant she didn‘t do ‗menial‘ work, or any work at all, apparently‖ (94). It follows that Margaret was trying to present herself as a middle-class woman, while denigrating Dana because of her race and because she perceives her as her competition in climbing the social ladder.

Octavia E. Butler uses Kindred to put the 1820s society in contrast with that of the

1970s, which is not depicted as different from the reality. Yet, it is worth addressing because the society and its class division is seen through the lens of Dana—an African

American young woman who is struggling financially because she has trouble finding a stable job and dreams of becoming a writer. This way, Octavia E. Butler presents a critique of capitalism and patriarchy that shape the 20th century society. Many Black feminists, such as Angela Davis or Frances Beale, identify with Marxist-socialist theories that accuse capitalism and imperialism of creating classism in order to control the society. Frances

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Beale in ―Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female‖ (1969) recognizes the system of capitalism and ―its afterbirth racism‖ (109) as the reason for the persisting subordinate position of African American women17.

Dana is trying to earn her money by working for a labor agency, which provides only ―degrading and dehumanizing jobs that were relegated to [black women]‖ (Beale 111).

Ironically, Dana calls the labor agency a ―slave market‖ because it only offers ―mindless work, and as far as most employers were concerned, it was done by mindless people‖ (53).

People who work for the labor agency are also those who struggle financially. Collins sees this low-paid service work as a cause for ―becom[ing] a part of the working poor, that segment of the Black working class most likely to end up in poverty‖ (60). When Dana describes those she meets there, she is practically speaking about a whole urban lower working class. She says that there are ―poor women with children trying to supplement their welfare checks, kids trying to get a first job, older people who‘d lost one job too many, and usually a poor crazy old street lady‖ (52) who only receive a minimum wage.

She calls the agency a ―slave market,‖ but I see that, besides the obvious features, there is a difference between the slavery of the 19th century and the 20th century. In the present, people come and join the slave market more-or-less voluntarily, because they need money.

They are not slaves of a master, but slaves of capitalism which again connotes with the black Marxist-socialist agenda presented in ―The Combahee River Collective Statement.‖

17 Another important hallmark of Black feminism and its struggle against socio-economic oppression of black women was an issue of ―The Combahee River Collective Statement‖ in 1977. A group of Black feminists and lesbians with an activist Barbara Smith in charge issued this statement to phrase their goals. Their priority presented in ―The Combahee River Collective Statement‖ was ―the liberation of all oppressed peoples‖ (213) and subsequent ―destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy‖ (213).

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Kindred depicts a flawed society, suggesting that the society is in the state of dystopia. In general, in the 19th century, African Americans were perceived as the lowest part in the class hierarchy. Moreover, they were mostly understood as a capital, a working force that reproduced wealth for their master. In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler accurately illustrates the wrongs caused by capitalism in order to prevent making these wrongs and mistakes in the future. She shows the numerous obstacles that white society created for

African Americans and preventing them from socio-economical betterment, partly because the members of the white society (especially in the 1820s) were not ready to share their social status with any African Americans. Nowadays, African Americans are not slaves who would be treated as a master‘s property. Nevertheless, some people are still confined in a space of constant economic lack. I am speaking of people who are still being disadvantaged because they grew up in a bad neighborhood, could not afford to pay for tuition, lost their parents, or just want to or have to have a financially unstable job, such as writing. They are left without opportunities to change their situation and those who have means and status to help these people out of this confinement simply ignore them. Thus, the individuals have to take every chance to gain at least some money to make the ends meet and by doing so, they contribute to the recreation of the category of class, especially the lowest class.

Considering Brown Girl in the Ring, class difference is the main reason why Burn, the inner city of Toronto, has been abandoned by the government and isolated from the rest of the world. The headlines of the old newspapers that Ti-Jeanne finds aptly describe

Toronto‘s destiny as ―TORONTO: THE MAKING OF A DOUGHNUT HOLE‖ (10). The inner city went bankrupt, because the Ontario politicians had to pay large money to compensate to the Native Americans for years of exploitation and discrimination. Due to

82 the lack of money in the provincial budget and corruption, the Ontario politicians were not able or willing to finance the Toronto city centre because only immigrants and poor people were living there. Consequently, the situation worsened and as Ti-Jeanne recalls,

―Toronto‘s economic base collapsed, investors, commerce, and government withdrew into the suburb cities, […]. Those who stayed were the ones who couldn‘t or wouldn‘t leave.

The street people. The poor people‖ (4). Due to violent riots that broke out there the

Ontario government ordered to isolate the city centre as to prevent spreading the riots and crime. Unfortunately, no one has been able to resolve the blooming organized crime in the isolated city centre. Despite the fact that Brown Girl in the Ring is a science fiction, this scenario is not unlikely to happen if one remembers, for example, the recent events in

Detroit. Therefore, Nalo Hopkinson is ―posting warnings‖ (Zaki 244) that should prevent creation of these ghettoes.

The complete isolation of the city centre where the organized crime dictates the rules resembles to a ghetto as the poor and underpriviledged people are completely segregated. It is interesting to observe how Sharon Smith in her article ―Black Feminism and Intersectionality‖ talks about the problematic of ghettoes and quotes a report of

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders from 1968 which states that:

Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive

environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white

Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never

forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White

institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society

condones it. (S. Smith)

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The same situation is depicted in Brown Girl in the Ring, where the Ontario politicians decide to impose the isolation on the city centre, maintain its borders, and the life in suburbs can continue without anyone protesting.

The ghettoes can be perceived as marginal places for marginalized people. Black feminists recognize ghettoes and life in them as an important factor that influences the social and economic conditions of those living there18 (Collins 10). Moreover, the literal isolation of Toronto‘s city centre illustrates how difficult it can be for African Americans to get out of the ghetto. As exemplified in Brown Girl in the Ring, the notion of ghetto is pushed to the extreme as there is not any possibility of contact with the world beyond the

Burn‘s borders. There are not any jobs, any schools, or any laws, except for those dictated by mafia with Rudy in charge. Rudy is Ti-Jeanne‘s grandfather, who abuses Caribbean shamanism and has connections among influential politicians outside the isolated city centre. Whenever the wealthy politicians need some illegal service, they turn to Rudy. In this way, they affirm Rudy‘s superior position and enforce the dystopian class division where those in power abuse it.

Despite being seen as a negative aspect of the present society, ghettoization can also have a positive effect. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins asserts that:

Despite the fact that ghettoization was designed to foster the political control

and economic exploitation of Black Americans (Squires 1994), these all-

Black neighborhoods simultaneously provided a separate space where

African-American women and men could use African-derived ideas to craft

18 It can influence one‘s access to education, to well-paid jobs, to medical care, but also to more negative things, such as prostitution, drugs, or arms. 84

distinctive oppositional knowledges designed to resist racial oppression. (9-

10)

The ghetto in Brown Girl in the Ring is not exclusively black, but almost exclusively immigrant. The isolated society was forced to turn to simpler ways of living and rely on farming, growing, bartering, and on the knowledge and skill of the older people who came there from various parts of the world and who still remember their traditions. For example,

Ti-Jeanne‘s grandmother Gros-Jeanne relies on traditional Caribbean medicine largely based on shamanism. By being separated from the rest of the white society, the members of the Toronto ghetto find it easier to accept their roots and the traditions.

After twelve years of the city centre isolation, the social order there is determined by a local mafia with Rudy in charge, who runs not only the mafia but the whole city. His power is supported by men who work and kill for him, and, in return, Rudy protects them.

These young men such as Tony, Ti-Jeanne‘s lover, find it easier and safer to deal drugs than risk becoming victims of Rudy‘s criminal activities. Those who do not serve Rudy are continuously intimidated, which prevents them from building a functional society, having no means to challenge his authority. Yet, there are many people who refuse to obey Rudy and rather respect someone else—Gros-Jeanne and later her granddaughter Ti-Jeanne.

Despite Rudy‘s power, he is afraid of Gros-Jeanne and Ti-Jeanne and wants them dead, because they threaten his status. Many people respect, support and rely on Gros-Jeanne and

Ti-Jeanne because of their professional skills. They help people (as well as spirits) and do not keep them in torture as Rudy does. In general, Brown Girl in the Ring presents a dystopian view of the future society as the class division persists and results in a creation of a ―doughnut hole‖ in the middle of Toronto and subsequently in a mafia-run society.

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Despite this dystopian representation of class in Brown Girl in the Ring, the ending of the novel envisions a better future for the city centre. Ti-Jeanne manages to overthrow

Rudy‘s rule and frees the city from the mafia. The Ontario premier Catherine Uttley, who gave the order to isolate the inner city of Toronto and entrusted it into Rudy‘s hands, needs heart transplantation. The heart that she receives belongs to the murdered Gros-Jeanne, Ti-

Jeanne‘s grandmother19. Even though Gros-Jeanne is dead, her heart is alive and after the transplantation the heart affects premier Uttley‘s mind, subduing it. The premier ―was losing the ability to control her own body. The heart was taking over. […] The creeping numbness spread up her neck. […] She had known that when [it reached her brain], she would no longer be herself‖ (237). Gros-Jeanne‘s heart convinces Uttley to restore the

Toronto city centre. Uttley, pondering on how to achieve it, says ―[w]e‘re going to rejuvenate Toronto […]. We‘re going to offer interest-free loans to small enterprises that are already there, give them perks if they fix up the real estate they‘re squatting on‖ (24).

Thus, Brown Girl in the Ring suggests that the isolation of people of lower social status, which follows from the interlocking character of class, gender, and race, is not a solution and social consciousness needs to be promoted in order to prevent the dystopian emergence of the ―doughnut hole‖ in the contemporary and future society.

IV.2. Constructing New Worlds: Utopian Hoping

Considering the analysis of critical dystopias in Kindred and Brown Girl in the Ring and their didactic message, Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber and Butler‘s Lilith’s Brood serve

19 Although the technology allows her to receive an organ that was planted in a pig, she refuses to take part in the ―porcine organ program‖ (39). She rather indirectly supports organ trafficking and murders in the abandoned Toronto. In other words, the outside world of suburbs and its people exploit those inside the abandoned Toronto, but they refuse any responsibility for them. 86 as an extension of critical dystopias as they propose and depict utopian societies. The revision of class and of the hierarchy offers new views on the future of the Western society, which can be identified as utopian hoping.

As exemplified in Lilith’s Brood and in Midnight Robber, there is no any economy and any real material condition that could support classism. Lilith’s Brood presents a post- apocalyptical world when the life on Earth was destroyed by nuclear weapons. Only few humans were saved by the Oankali, the extraterrestrial creatures who define themselves as

―traders‖ (23). However, they do not trade goods for profit but genes with other species.

Lilith’s Brood is interesting because it begins with Lilith‘s awakening on the Oankali spaceship and her adjustment to the life with the Oankali. As soon as Lilith adapts to the life on the spaceship and accepts the Oankali‘s alien appearance, philosophy and abilities, she is asked to awaken more people who will be shipped to Earth, so that the life there can be restored. But before that, the Oankali trade genes with humans and create a new hybrid society compound of the hybrid species of human-Oankali. In short, one can observe an emergence of a completely new society. In cooperation with the Oankali, it is an opportunity for Lilith to shape the society according to her idea and destroy any kind of oppression that she experienced as a black woman back on Earth.

Speaking about utopia and dystopia in Octavia E. Butler‘s Lilith’s Brood, Hoda M.

Zaki asserts that Butler identifies the major obstacle in attaining utopia to be the flawed human nature (Zaki 241). According to Lilith’s Brood, the human nature is governed by the need for hierarchy. Hierarchy is also the reason why the Oankali want to trade genes with humans. Nikanj is one of the first Oankali to which Lilith trusts. At one point, she asks

Nikanj why they chose humans to breed with and Nikanj replies that humanity has ―two incompatible characteristics‖ (38) of intelligence and hierarchy. These two characteristics

87 are ―a horror and a beauty in rare combination‖ (154). However, Nikanj explains that

―[w]hen human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all… That was like ignoring a cancer‖ (39). The hierarchy was fatal to the humankind. But now, it is

Lilith‘s responsibility to recreate life on Earth and suppress the restoration of hierarchy.

Lilith‘s quest to create a utopian non-hierarchical society is constantly challenged by attempts of other humans to distance themselves from the extraterrestrials and refuse to mate with them or build any new society because of their alienness. At the same time, the

―resisters‖ (279) who refuse to accept the Oankali‘s help and participation in restoring the life on Earth also to a large extent adhere to the society before the nuclear war and its systematic oppression, such as racism, sexism and xenophobia.

This dystopian depiction of human nature is actually used politically as Jim Miller asserts in ―Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler‘s Dystopian/Utopian Vision‖ (336).

He argues that Lilith’s Brood is ―a critical dystopia motivated out of a utopian pessimism‖

(337) because it ―force[s] us to confront the dystopian elements of postmodern culture so that we can work through them and begin again‖ (337). In Lilith’s Brood, the postmodern dystopian element is the nuclear war that destroyed life on Earth. But there is a new hope for the future—possibly without any wars, if humans and the Oankali unite and create new hybrid beings. By acknowledging the dangers of hierarchy—patriarchy or classism, there is a hope for humans to subvert it and find a way towards a more just society.

There are three diametrically different societies in Midnight Robber. The novel illustrates that the oppressive forces of class division can be overcome. Interestingly, Tan-

Tan has the opportunity to live in all three societies, which enables her to compare and contrast them and eventually choose the one in which she feels the happiest. Similarly to

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Midnight Robber, Lilith’s Brood depicts a society where the notion of class is no longer an issue. However, it is to a large extent Lilith‘s task to sustain this utopian society.

In Midnight Robber, Tan-Tan experiences living in three different societies—the society on Toussaint, the human community on New Half-Way Tree and the douen society, which allows her to compare them to one another. She grew up on Toussaint, a planet that was colonized by people of African and Caribbean origin who decided to leave Earth and establish a better world to live in. Toussaint is under constant surveillance of Granny

Nanny, a female artificial intelligence, who oversees that the laws and rules are obeyed.

There is not any crime or oppression, because all those who violate the law and rules of the planet are sent to an exile on New Half-Way Tree, a parallel dimension.

In her article ―‗On the Receiving End of the Colonization‘: Nalo Hopkinson‘s

‗Nansi Web,‖ Jillana Enteen claims that Hopkinson‘s contribution to Afrofuturist science fiction lies in her ―alternative formulations of the relationships between humans and technology‖ (263) that can inspire further social and technological progress and eventually result in the creation of a better society without oppression. In an interview for SF Site.org,

Nalo Hopkinson explains it was not a deliberate effort to create a utopian society on

Toussaint where class division does not mean social and economic oppression. She states that

It isn't perfect; the person who invented the system saw the high level of

benign surveillance as an acceptable trade-off for the kind of safety and high

quality of life that the people would have. There are no poor people on

Toussaint, and no wage slaves. And though Granny Nanny perceives all, she

doesn't tell all, unless she thinks it's an issue of someone's safety. It really

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does feel like being mothered, and sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes

it's a smothering thing.

Therefore, Nalo Hopkinson suggests that an emergence of a utopian society is only possible if there is a cyborg—a mothering artificial intelligence in charge of the whole society.

The level of development of the society on Toussaint manifests itself through the lifestyle of Tan-Tan‘s family. Tan-Tan has her own nanny who spends more time with her than her own mother Ione. Ione is always preoccupied with her suitors and takes a good care of her appearance. And Tan-Tan‘s father Antonio is always working and rarely spends time with his family. Tan-Tan‘s family lives a life to a large extent separated from the rests of the Toussaint society, which resembles a life of a high class that rarely gets involved with the rest of the world. In other words, the issues stemming from classism are overcome and now there is only one class on Toussaint which has similar features as what was/is understood as a high class in our reality.

On the other hand, the exile dimension New Half-Way Tree is a necessary price for sustaining the utopia on Toussaint. On New Half-Way Tree, Tan-Tan first lives with other humans who were exiled and founded communities there. However, these communities resemble violent anarchies rather than a functional society. There is not any class division but the level of development of this society and its economic prosperity is very low.

Surprised Tan-Tan, who was pampered by life on utopian Toussaint, asks an exiled woman where all the servants are and she replies:

Darling, nobody here have any artisans to gift them with their skills. You

and Antonio going to have to cook your own food that you grow in your

own yard, or that you hunt and kill yourself. […] We not people no more.

We is exiles. Is work hard or die. (135)

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The life on inhospitable New Half-Way Tree is difficult for humans also because they forgot how to work hard either because they did not have to or they did not want to work.

Many of those who were sent there are criminals or violators of peace and justice.

Humans are not the only inhabitants of New Half-Way Tree. It is also a home to many creatures from Caribbean and African oral tradition. Soon after arriving to the exile of New Half-Way Tree, Tan-Tan befriends a douen called Chichibud who leads her and her father to a human settlement of Junjuh. Contrary to the human communities who are barely surviving, the douen society is depicted as a utopian and egalitarian society living in accordance with nature and its members are very sentient and caring. Most of the time, the douens avoid contact with humans because they see them as dishonest, violent, and hostile to anything or anyone different. When Tan-Tan kills her abusive father, she has to hide from humans, because they want to revenge on her. And so the douens accept the girl to their community and Tan-Tan finally feels safe and happy for the first time since she had to leave Toussaint. Chichibud welcomes her by saying ―[y]ou in Pappa Bois, the daddy tree that does feed we and give we shelter. Every douen nation have it own daddy tree. Come in peace to my home, Tan-Tan. And when you go, go in friendship‖ (179). Given the depiction of loving relationship to nature, Midnight Robber implies that the future is not only about technological development but also about preserving nature.

To conclude, Lilith’s Brood depicts a post-apocalyptic situation that means a new beginning for both humans and the Oankali. Therefore, the novel does not depict any classism. Because humans are ―hierarchical‖ (Butler 39) and this feature could project into the new society and cause more wars, oppressions, and discriminations, it is necessary that humans mate with the Oankali and create a hybrid society. In Midnight Robber, the communities in which Tan-Tan lives are presented as utopian in terms of class, because

91 there is not any conflict between classes. The communities only vary according to which level of social and economic development they reproduce. But the level of development is equally distributed within the given society. Despite the fact that the members of the human colonies on New Half-Way Tree are exiled people who struggle to survive and live in poverty, dirt, and only care about themselves, there is a chance that they might construct a functional society with a hierarchy determined by one‘s survival and/or craft skills. On the other hand, the douen community is egalitarian and very sensible to their home called

―daddy tree‖ or ―pappa bois‖ (179). They praise nature of New Half-Way Tree for giving them home, food, and shelter and so they provide the same to Tan-Tan without asking anything in return, which is in contrast to her life in the human community of Junjuh where her father was repeatedly abusing her.

IV.3. Class and Black Woman’s Identity: Issues to be Resolved

Despite the fact that Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson imagine worlds where many of the obstacles faced by black women in the contemporary world are resolved, there are still some issues that go unnoticed but affect young black women. Bell hooks asserts that ―class is not only a question of money‖ (39). Class is also about the environment in which an individual is forced to live. I argue that the environment where the characters of

Dana in Kindred and Ti-Jeanne in Brown Girl in the Ring live influences their ―concepts of a future‖ (Brown qtd. in hooks 39). Therefore, I explore how the place where the characters live affects their future aspirations.

According to Black feminism, there are still many black women who are marked by lack of money because of the jobs available to them. As explained by Rose M. Brewer in

―Theorizing Race, Gender, and Class,‖ black women have moved from domestic to clerical

92 and industrial jobs but these jobs are often low-paid, which results in incapability of providing a family wage and thus in ―increasing impoverishment and fragmentation of

Black women, children and families‖ (Brewer 19). Although Dana does not have a family to support financially, she is expected to fit in this pattern of working in services. Indeed,

Dana works as a clerk-typist, but due to the instability of the job market for black women she gets fired and decides to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. When she first meets

Kevin, she complains to him, saying that:

My uncle and aunt said I could write in my spare time if I wanted to.

Meanwhile, for the real future, I was to take something sensible in school if

I expected them to support me. I went from the nursing program into a

secretarial major, and from there to elementary education. (56)

All of these jobs are sensible, according to her aunt and uncle. Everybody around her discourages her from the writing career. Even her husband Kevin, who is also a writer, is rather skeptical about Dana‘s success as a writer, as he asks her to type his manuscripts instead of focusing on her own writing. Thus, Dana is constantly being discouraged from pursuing her dreams.

Compared to Dana, Ti-Jeanne in Brown Girl in the Ring has resigned to having dreams. She lives in an impoverished isolated city centre without any real economy, without jobs and schools. Her grandmother Gros-Jeanne expects her to learn nursing from her and more importantly the Caribbean shamanism and, although Ti-Jeanne is not excited about becoming a healer like her grandmother, it helps her to recognize her place in the abandoned society. From her point of view the life before the city centre separation was not any better as she comments bitterly: ―all of that was old-time story. Who cared anymore?‖

(12). She accepted the way of living in the abandoned city centre and, contrary to her lover

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Tony, she does not aspire to leave it, because she does not see any place for her elsewhere.

She admits that

The thought of the ‗burbs scared Ti-Jeanne. She knew it was safer. She

knew that there were hospitals and corner stores and movie theatres, but all

she could imagine were broad streets with cars zipping by too fast to see

who was in them, and people huddled in their houses except for jumping

into their cars to drive to and from work. (111)

Ti-Jeanne criticizes the lifestyle of people living in the suburbs. Traditionally, the suburbs were perceived as a space for middle-class people who are living in their own little isolated world. Despite the danger, she feels to be a part of the inner city community—a respected part, because she and her grandmother help people with health problems.

When considering the ―concepts of [one‘s] future,‖ class also limits a black woman‘s decision about (not) becoming a mother. In both Brown Girl in the Ring and

Midnight Robber, the main characters are single mothers. Interestingly, the fact that they are single mothers does not affect them economically but psychically. In Lilith’s Brood, the concept of reproduction is revised in order to empower a woman in questions of (not) becoming a mother. In contemporary Black feminism, the concept of sexual reproduction also involves the concept of class as pregnancy and motherhood, especially in case of single mothers, can result in the poverty of African American women. Patricia Hill Collins recognizes black single mothers as the ―new working poor‖ (61) and argues that ―labor market as well as changes in federal policies toward the poor have left this group economically marginalized‖ (62). Furthermore, in Feminism Is for Everybody, bell hooks argues that ―while individual white women with class privilege often had access to

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[contraceptives and abortions], most women did not‖ (25). Thus, the unprivileged women could not decide independently when and with whom they wanted to be pregnant.

In Midnight Robber, when Tan-Tan lives in the human colony on New Half-Way

Tree and gets pregnant with her abusive father, she manages to get abortion because her father helps her. But when he rapes her for the last time before she kills him, she is pregnant again but has to leave the human colony because she is a murderer. She is forced to keep the baby that she calls a ―monster‖ (233) because there is not anyone who could or would help her abort it. Tan-Tan as well as Ti-Jeanne in Brown Girl in the Ring does not want to be a mother and it takes both of them a long time to start loving their babies. Ti-

Jeanne leaves her lover Tony because of his trouble with mafia and drugs but she does not tell him she is pregnant. Later, when he discovers Ti-Jeanne has a baby but no partner, he treats her with contempt. Only later does he discover that he is the father. Tony‘s initial contempt illustrates the unfortunate, but widely held opinion that only women are responsible for being single mothers. This assumption points to the fact that women in general are exploited both emotionally, but also physically.

To stop exploitation of women because of seeing them as mothers—biological means of reproduction, it is necessary to revise the whole concept of sexual reproduction.

In Lilith’s Brood, to reproduce means to reach a mutual consensus of female, male and the third gender. The sexual reproduction is revised and made more complicated than the previous human one where a man and a woman are involved. The uniquely human offspring cannot be born from a sexual relationship between a human man and a woman because the Oankali modified the genes of the humans who survived. The only possibility to reproduce is to be involved in a sexual relationship in which both human and Oankali, female, male, and the third gender ooloi participate. In consequence, the characters

95 experience a significant sexual freedom. In addition to this freedom, both human and

Oankali females can bear children or ―constructs‖ (259) as the characters in Lilith’s Brood call them.

In The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970) Shulamith

Firestone suggests that a revision of a relation between gender and body is necessary. She proposes that ―[t]he end goal of feminist revolution must be […] not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital difference between human beings would no longer matter culturally‖ (19). Overall, she presents a radical idea that the human reproduction should happen independently of a woman‘s body in order to stop perceiving women as means for child-rearing. It becomes partly possible in Lilith’s Brood and so it revises the socio-economical implications of reproduction and motherhood.

In conclusion, the texts suggest that the concept of class is addressed in all four analyzed texts in order to challenge our contemporary notion of class. Brown Girl in the

Ring presents class as a cause of dystopia. If the class division continues, the future could resemble to the one in this novel. In Kindred, Dana experiences living in the 19th and 20th century, which enables her to perceive the difference in the notion of class and a place of an

African American woman. Her view is neither utopian nor dystopian. She acknowledges an improvement in social status of African Americans. However, there are still many obstacles that prevent an individual to promote himself/herself socially. The idea in Midnight Robber is that class is no longer an issue, because on Toussaint there is an omnipresent artificial intelligence that maintains justice—be it legal or social justice. For this reason, Toussaint is a utopian world. As exemplified on the human communities on New Half-Way Tree, they are utopian in terms of class because there is not any class division. Everybody is preoccupied with trying to survive in the exile and everybody has to rely on his/her own

96 skills. This demonstrates a possible and hopeful start for a new society without class division.

Nevertheless, following from the previous chapters on race and gender, the oppression according to gender and race/species remains a problem. Further, the douen community intact of human social history proposes the idea that a utopian society can be established only if all its members are very sensitive to the world and nature in which they live as well as to each other. This proposal correlates with the one presented in Lilith’s

Brood because it also emphasizes the importance of reflecting on one‘s actions and its impact on the future. Jim Miller states that ―[j]ust as Xenogenesis offers a vision of a cyborg identity, it also offers a figure for a new society that has learned from the mistakes of the failed societies of old‖ (346) and that figure is Lilith, which supports my argument that Lilith is a cyborg. Moreover, as the emergence of utopian world in Midnight Robber is enabled because of the compassionate artificial intelligence called Granny Nanny, the society in Lilith Brood can also be utopian because of Lilith being a cyborg.

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V. Conclusion: Midnight Queens Dreaming

This final thesis has been concerned with African American feminist science fiction written by Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson. Because of the limited number of female authors in African American science fiction, their works are often neglected, although they introduce an interesting insight on the experience of a black woman in the society. Since the topic of being black and a woman is central in their novels, I have chosen to employ

Black feminism as a theoretical background. Previously, African American science fiction was explored only with regard to Afrofuturism which envisions black futures and addresses concerns of race and the African diaspora. Given the complexity of a black woman‘s experience, I find it necessary to introduce Black feminist discourse into the discussion about the Afro-future. Moreover, there is a need for a literary criticism of Black feminist science fiction, as the number of the writers within this genre slowly rises.

Based on the analysis of Octavia E. Butler‘s Kindred and Lilith’s Brood and Nalo

Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber, I have explored how these authors attempt to subvert the interlocking categories of race, gender, and class that influence a black woman‘s self-definition and determine her place in the society. Since both

Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson choose their main protagonists to be African

American women, they use them as a means to communicate a message about a black woman‘s experience. By revisiting the past and envisioning the future in their novels, they hold up a mirror to the imperfections of our society and emphasize the possibilities that could result in the creation of a more just world.

Since the plots of the texts I have chosen to focus on are each set in a different time period—in the past, the present, the near and post-apocalyptic future, and in the far future, it enabled me to trace the process of undermining race, gender and class in different spatial-

98 temporal contexts. Because Kindred and Brown Girl in the Ring are highlighting the flaws of the Western society, they present the world in which we live as a critical dystopia, whereas Midnight Robber and Lilith’s Brood are proposing solutions to overcoming the oppressions based on race, gender and class, and thus envision utopian worlds.

The analyzed works challenge the binary thinking about race that promotes racial oppression. When speaking about race, it is easy to slip into stereotypical binary thinking that implies that African Americans are the Others. Yet, the novels analyzed propose to see race as an empowering part of one‘s identity. Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson emphasize the importance of embracing one‘s past, one‘s roots and ancestry. Given the concept of Afrofuturism which combines elements of science fiction with the experience of

African diaspora and thus ensures the continuance of the legacy of African American past to the future, it follows that race has a positive meaning when envisioning the future.

Therefore, the texts suggest the importance of acknowledging one‘s past as knowing one‘s history means knowing oneself.

The binary thinking about race is further challenged in Octavia E. Butler‘s and Nalo

Hopkinson‘s works by the type of societies they invent as they propose societies with no racial oppression. Nalo Hopkinson offers a post-racial society compound of those who are marginalized in the Western society. On the other hand, Octavia E. Butler calls for a creation of a hybrid society where race would be exhausted and where xenogenesis, a production of ―an offspring completely unlike either parent‖ (Collins Dictionary) would take place. Butler‘s assertion that racial oppression can be conquered only if the whole human race is recast is reflected in the title of the analyzed trilogy as it is called

Xenogenesis.

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Interestingly, the 2000 edition of Xenogenesis was renamed to Lilith’s Brood, highlighting the notion of reproduction and of family relations in the word ―brood‖.

Moreover, the parent of the brood—of the new society is clearly named, which interestingly accentuates the right choice of the main character‘s name as it possibly refers to the biblical Lilith, ―Adam‘s first wife [who] refused to submit to his rule and [therefore] was cast out of Eden‖ (Peppers 47). Furthermore, the choice of the name Lilith serves as a symbol of gender struggle as Lilith as she refused to be subservient to Adam.

Another part of this thesis has been dealing with gender as experienced by the main female protagonists. I have argued that one should acknowledge one‘s roots and connection to one‘s ancestry, this chapter proposes that the creation of sisterhood can have a positive effect on the characters. It depicts that women establish strong sisterly bonds across time, space and species. For Dana, Lilith, Ti-Jeanne and Tan-Tan, their experience of their gender is defined by facing certain limitations, be it the limitations in power, in economy or in career. Keeping Black feminist thought in mind, the female characters can join their power to find a collective voice and fight the stereotypical understanding of black femininity represented by the controlling images of a mammy, matriarch, and/or a jezebel, for instance. As the controlling images are tools for constant denigration of black women, the rebellion against them can result in the healing of black femininity. Moreover, Octavia

E. Butler tackles gender oppression by depicting femininity not only as opposed to masculinity, but also by introducing third gender, which results in a revision of other concepts such as sexuality and traditional family pattern.

Similarly to race and gender, class is also a social construct. As Lilith’s Brood and

Midnight Robber envision future societies, they erase class differences and show that the world free of classism is the first step towards undermining racism and sexism. At the same

100 time, the last chapter illustrates the interlocking character of the oppressive categories because it shows how African Americans, and especially African American women, have been deliberately kept impoverished so that the dominant white racist and patriarchal society could sustain control over them. Therefore, the works of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo

Hopkinson criticize capitalism and patriarchy, which agrees with the Black feminist thought as presented by the Combahee River Collective.

Another key point that has been argued in this final thesis is that the main characters do not conform to the stereotypical images of black women. The main characters of Dana,

Lilith, Ti-Jeanne and Tan-Tan attempt to overcome the limitations of being a (black) woman as they are put into situations where they have to stand up for their rights. Thus, they can be seen as role models for young women. It stems from my analysis that racism and classism are concepts for which the authors propose many different ways of solution, but sexism remains a complicated issue not easy to overcome. Beside Lilith’s Brood where the third gender is presented, the analyzed novels depict women struggling against patriarchy and against their oppressions imposed on them by men.

It is noteworthy that the analyzed texts speak for the empowerment of the marginalized by bringing them into the centre of attention. De Witt Douglas Killgore and

Ranu Samantrai praise works of Octavia E. Butler for the ways in which the marginalized, be it a discriminated person or a taboo subject, is shifted towards the centre of attention in science fiction. They argue that:

The paradoxical centrality of the marginal is Butler's version of sf's double-

edged sword: her highly speculative alternative worlds are in many ways not

recognizable from where we stand, but their very difference makes them a

101

critical mirror held up to the choices and investments that have made our

world. (357)

Similarly to Octavia E. Butler, also Nalo Hopkinson speaks in her texts for the promotion of the marginalized. Both authors challenge the status quo in terms of race, gender and class in order to stop interpreting the characters and their possible parallels in the contemporary Western society as the Other. The female characters are introduced into the imagined worlds where the class hierarchy is being subverted, as well as patriarchy that governs the contemporary Western society.

Moreover, it follows from the analysis that the genre of science fiction suits well for subversion because it does not only criticize, but also offers solutions. As both authors present a social critique, it is comparable to realist fiction, only with the difference that science fiction goes beyond the mere critique as it envisions specific futures. In addition, the success of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson challenges the sexist notion of science fiction that is often claimed to be written ―by and about white men‖ (Glave 148).

Thus, science fiction empowers the authors as well as their characters and those who perceive them as role models because of the hopeful futures the authors and their novels offer.

In conclusion, as the title of this thesis Midnight Queens Dreaming suggests, it emphasizes the very uniqueness of the works of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson.

Writing from the position of a black woman whose blackness is as deep as a midnight, they rule the words just as they rule their worlds, dreaming about better future. Indeed, they use the power of science fiction—they combine speculation with the truth just as the Midnight

Robber uses the power of words. The heroines of their stories represent the views of those who wrote them. Therefore, both Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, as well as their

102 heroines speak with one voice. To conclude, let me quote the words from Midnight Robber, commenting on Tan-Tan‘s finding a voice of a Robber Queen, which underpin the power of imagination and narration in general when finding one‘s voice: ―Somebody spoke her words the way the Carnival Robber Kings wove their tales, talking as much nonsense as sense, fancy words spinning out from their mouths like thread from a spider‘s behind: silken shit as strong as story‖ (245).

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English Resumé

This diploma thesis deals with African American feminist science fiction, a recent phenomenon of African American literature. It compares and contrasts novels of Octavia E.

Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, namely Octavia E. Butler‘s Kindred and Lilith’s Brood and

Nalo Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber, and it analyzes how they revisit the past and envision the future in terms of race, gender and class. As the two authors are of African American and Caribbean origin, respectively, these interlocking categories are examined from a Black feminist perspective, paying attention to issues such as racism, sexism and classism. The central argument of the diploma thesis is that both

Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson challenge the stereotypical character of the concepts of race, gender and class and attempt to subvert them.

The diploma thesis consists of three chapters where each of them deals with one of the interlocking categories as the main protagonists of the works analyzed are young

African American women. The first chapter explores the concept of race in context of

Afrofuturism which emphasizes the importance and legacy of African American past and its projection to the future. Further, the diploma thesis examines issues related to gender such as black femininity, motherhood and sisterhood. Finally, it analyzes the significance of class, as one of the interlocking categories influencing a black woman. It follows that

Butler and Hopkinson criticize capitalism and patriarchy that limits a black woman‘s position in the society, portraying alternative societies without race, gender and/or class being a troubling issue.

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Czech Resumé

Tématem této diplomové práce je nově vznikající literární tradice afroamerické literatury - afroamerické feministické science fiction. Ve své práci analyzuji díla dvou současných spisovatelek Octavie E. Butler a Nalo Hopkinson. Na příkladu jejich románů pozoruji, jak jsou rasa, gender a třída chápány jako prolínající se zdroje nerovností a jak se spisovatelky zasazují o jejich překonání, k čemuž využívají prostředků žánru science fiction. Protože obě spisovatelky jsou afroamerického a karibského původu, k analýze jejich románů přistupuji skrze černošský feminismus, přičemž se soustředím na problémy spojené s rasismem, sexismem a třídní stratifikací. Hlavní tezí této práce je snaha Octavie

E. Butler a Nalo Hopkinson vyvrátit stereotypní chápání prolínajících se nerovností vyplývajících z rasové, genderové nebo třídní příslušnosti.

Diplomová práce je rozdělena do tří kapitol, přičemž každá z kapitol se věnuje jednomu z prolínajících se konceptů—rase, genderu nebo třídě, jenž ovlivňují sebepojetí afroamerických žen, které se ocitají na křižovatkách nerovností způsobených rasismem, sexismem a třídní stratifikací. V první části své práce analyzuji koncept rasy v souvislosti s Afrofuturismem, který klade důraz na odkaz afroamerické minulosti a jeho otisk do budoucnosti. Dále se zabývám problémy spojených s genderem, které se týkají afroamerických žen a jejich vzájemných vztahů. Důležitou částí této práce je i otázka mateřství. Závěrečná část práce pojednává o významu třídy a jejím vlivu na sebepojetí afroamerických žen. Z mé analýzy románů Octavie E. Butler a Nalo Hopkinson vyplývá, že spisovatelky záměrně zobrazují alternativní světy, ve kterých rasa, gender a třída nejsou důvodem k diskriminaci.

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