A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535819701

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Bloodchild

Octavia Butler

1984

Introduction

Octavia Butler, science fiction’s most notable and influential African-American woman writer, first published Bloodchild in Isaac Asimov ‘s Science Fiction Magazine in 1984. The story was well received and won two of science fiction’s most prestigious awards, the Hugo and the Nebula. Butler, who is known primarily as a novelist, did not publish the story in book form until 1995, when she collected five of her short stories and two essays in Bloodchild and Other Stories. By this point, Butler had gained a much broader critical and popular reputation, and the collection was praised highly in distinguished mainstream forums such as the New York Times and Booklist. That same year, Butler was awarded the celebrated MacArthur Fellowship—commonly known as the genius award—for the body of her work.

Butler has described Bloodchild as a story about male pregnancy. Set on a foreign planet inhabited by giant, powerful, and intelligent insect-like beings, Bloodchild is the story of a young human male coming of age and coming to terms with his role as the carrier of an alien species’ eggs. He witnesses the violent delivery of alien grubs from the abdomen of another man and is forced to question the relationship he has long taken for granted with the species whose planet he shares. Butler is acclaimed for her fully realized characters and her sensitivity toward the psychological dilemmas created by her imaginative science fiction scenarios. In the disconcerting world of Bloodchild, Butler raises provocative questions about sex roles, self sacrifice, and the interdependence between different species.

Author Biography

Octavia Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947, the only child of Laurice and Octavia Butler. Her father died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Butler was a shy and solitary child who took refuge in reading. Her mother, a maid with a limited education, instilled in Butler a love of books and learning. From the age of ten, Butler knew that she wanted