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I’ve read this after spending a couple of years being taught by James Baldwin (his books) so what I read I filter through that.

Having read JB I can see what he talked about here, how black and white are meshed together, how the wrong of one affects both. Not in equal ways but in indelible ways none the less. How the initial crime (enslavement) has molded and distorted the lives of so many people (enslaved and slavers) because one action leads to another and another…�.. I think Butler shows this with how Rufus grows up, could he really have grown up to be a different man? How a society based on crime/violence generates more violence and that is paid for in blood. The physical tribute Dana has to pay being a reminder that the slaves paid with their blood and the blood of their children. A question remains in my mind - how can a society with both the abuser and the abused living together manage to get over the past and create a future, a good future for both? I kind of feel that they have not quite managed that yet.

This is Butler’s slave narrative, the sci fi bit is there to serve that, in fact we are never given any answers to how that came about. This being my first Butler I don’t know if this is her usual style. As a style it is rather distanced from the reader, maybe a distance required to quiet emotion and think more.

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