What Do I Read Next?
Last Updated August 8, 2024.
- The five novels in Octavia Butler's "Patternmaster" series delve into the history of the Patternists, human mutants with telepathic abilities. In the first book, Patternmaster (1976), the Patternists fight against the "Clayarks" and among themselves for global dominance.
- Butler's "Xenogenesis" trilogy, similar to Kindred, intricately examines the dynamics between rulers and the oppressed. After a nuclear disaster, the few surviving humans on Earth are offered salvation by an alien species in exchange for their genetic material. The ethical dilemmas faced by both humans and hybrid generations are explored in Dawn: Xenogenesis (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989).
- Butler's recent "Earthseed" series is set in a turbulent America of the early twenty-first century. Lauren Oya Olamina, a young African-American girl with the ability to feel others' pain, "discovers" her own religion named Earthseed and starts gathering followers. Her journey begins in Parable of the Sower (1993) and continues in Parable of the Talents (1998).
- Gayl Jones's Corregidora (1975) narrates the psychological impact of slavery on a contemporary woman. Blues singer Ursa Corregidora descends from women who were sexually abused by a Portuguese slaveholder named Corregidora, who fathered both her mother and grandmother. The novel depicts her struggle to reconcile her heritage with her current life.
- Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) employs time travel to envision a utopian future. While staying in a mental hospital, a woman frequently travels to the future, where she encounters a cooperative society.
- Slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) provided Butler with crucial background information for her novel.
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