But the Dow
Girls' School Book Club: February Week 3
“The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. Americans 401ks and retirement savings are booming. That’s what we should be talking about.” — Attorney General Pam Bondi
Book Club Meeting: Sunday, March 1, at 12 PM PST
Zoom Link posted: Saturday, February 28
Book Pairing: Fledgling by Octavia Butler and Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen R Ghodsee
This week: February 16: Fledgling — p. 177-249 (Ch. 17-23); Better Sex Chapters 4-5
The Death of the Author
In Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay “The Death of the Author” he introduced the concept through which I usually teach and analyze texts myself, which focuses on the text itself and not authorial intention. It’s a Postmodern approach and while I won’t go into all the details here (another post forthcoming!), it really gives agency to the reader in creating their own meaning/interpretation (often called Reader Response Theory) and rejects the notion that there is a single, fixed interpretation.
But because of my love for Octavia Butler, I find myself wondering about her intentions all the time, especially when it comes to her body of work. She’s such a conceptual writer, and especially with Fledgling, I see the concepts as the driving force of the novel, at times over character or even narrative, and in the case of Fledgling, perhaps over both.
I also feel a kinship with her, as she’s one of my favorite local authors (along with Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper) — what do you think was going on in Pasadena to produce such literary icons? In any case, if you’ve ever clicked on any of my linked books, you know that my Bookshop.org supports my local Octavia’s Bookshelf:
Octavia’s Bookshelf is Pasadena, California’s only Black Woman owned bookstore offering books and other literature by BIPOC writer. Our mission is to offer these magical and rich stories to readers of all backgrounds, interests and ages.
So today let’s examine Butler’s texts in terms of how they connect to each other, which is a way for me to continue to speculate about Butler as an author while also keeping the focus on her texts, in this case, her 2 most well-known novels, Kindred (1979) and Parable of the Sower (1993), in conversation with Fledgling (2005). In all three, she’s discussing bodily autonomy and power, asking something along the lines of what happens to the body when it becomes a site of contested ownership?
I was first introduced to these texts in the order above, each with several years between. I was teaching an English 101 course at Los Angeles City College when I was 25 years old, fresh out of my master’s program, a good handful of my students older than I was, when I first encountered Kindred. I have been stuck on the same literary subjects since the late 80s when I first fell in love with punk rock, all connected under the same umbrella — rebellion. Banned books and censorship and feminist and queer theory and the most punk rock genre of all — musical theatre. Rent had me in an unbelievable chokehold in the 90s.
So all my curricula were planned around literary rebellion and I knew I also wanted something of a page turner when it came to choosing my novels.
Kindred is a time travel novel and you’ll notice her books take on the sci-fi cloak whether subtly or explicitly. She’s of course an award-winning science fiction writer but these three texts in particular subvert the genre interestingly. Parable of the Sower is set in 2024-2027 and after the inauguration and the Eaton Fire earned Butler the status of prophet — it reads less like science fiction than fact (Feb 1, 2025: “We had a fire today” and an authoritarian President Donner). And Fledgling is of course a vampire/Frankenstein novel, exploring the effects of experimenting with science, technology, biology. (If it seems obvious that Fledgling is a vampire/Frankenstein mash-up, I have to admit I only noticed it during this month’s read, while I am prepping for a Frankenstein lecture based on Substack post I wrote and a course I created:
…which is further proof of the benefits of paired reading and schema accommodation!)
And they’re all about race and culture.
Kindred
Dana Franklin is a Black Southern Californian in 1976, a published writer, married. She travels backward in time to save her white ancestor Rufus Weylin’s life, but she doesn’t choose to go and she has no power over when to come back. And on the Maryland planation she travels to, she’s enslaved.
Rufus Weylin is a white slaveholder's son who is also her ancestor. Each trip is triggered when Rufus's life is in danger, and Dana can only return to the present when her own life is genuinely threatened. Over the course of these journeys, which span Rufus's lifetime from childhood to adulthood, Dana is forced to navigate the daily violence of plantation enslavement and to negotiate an increasingly manipulative relationship with Rufus as he grows into his inherited power. The hardest part, and the crux of the novel (and her existence) is that she can’t let Rufus die before he fathers the child in her family line, which means she must ensure the coerced relationship between Rufus and Alice, a free Black woman, that produces that child. When she crosses back through time her final time, she loses her arm, her body permanently marked, permanently changed, a visible reminder of her relationship to her past.
The concept driving this novel: survival and complicity are at times inseparable.
Parable of the Sower
Is a near‑future dystopian novel told through the journals of Lauren Olamina, a young Black woman with “hyperempathy” who feels others’ pain and pleasure as her own. As climate change, privatization, and social collapse destroy her Southern California community, Lauren is forced to flee north surrounded by refugees and violent gangs. On the road she gathers a small group of survivors and begins to share Earthseed, a belief system she has been developing which teaches that humans must adapt, take responsibility, and ultimately seek to shape their destiny. The novel follows her journey from a sheltered teenager to a community founder, all through her Earthseed philosophy.
The concept here could be that extreme vulnerability as/is the foundation for vision.
Fledgling
And then we have our girl Shori.
All of these texts deal with issues concerning the physical body, and in Fledgling, Shori is learning about her body as an experiment while at the same time she has power over other people’s bodies, as her bite creates a chemical dependency without which her symbionts cannot survive. Symbionts.
The concept: Who has (actual) power over coercion and consent?
As this was her final book, after a career of writing about adaptation and survival, is her final statement that the future belongs to the hybrid? (Keeping in mind, there is evidence that Fledgling was meant to be but the beginning of a duology if not a series).
Reading Guide
Fledgling — p. 177-249 (Ch. 17-23); Better Sex Chapters 4-5
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
Chapter 4— “Capitalism Between the Sheets: On Sex (Part 1)”
Ghodsee examines sexual economics theories which posit that women use sex as an
