Throughline Project

Fludgelings by Octavia Butler is a story about a 10-year-old black vampire named Shori who wakes up in a cave with no memory of her past. She discovers that she is a vampire with human genetics that allow her to have black skin and survive in daylight. However, she faces violence and discrimination because of this. In Broken from the Colony by Ada M. Patterson, a trans woman survives a hurricane and becomes part of a coral colony. Both stories explore the isolation and alienation experienced due to racial and gender identities. Octavia Butler faced poverty and worked odd jobs while writing, and Ada M. Patterson uses the sea as inspiration in their work. These stories delve into the nuances of people's experiences and emotions. Picture this, you wake up, it's dark, almost so dark you question whether or not you have the capability to even see. You come to your senses, you realize that your body is in an excruciating amount of pain progressively over the next couple of days, weeks, months, who knows how long really. You start coming together, realizing that you're burnt and shot and scarred and that your head is indented and soft and your hunger simply insatiable. So when you hear a creature crawling into the cave, you do what seems natural, you kill him and eat him, not really knowing who he or it is. Alternatively, perhaps you're under the ocean, looking up above you, you see the sunlight, the waves crashing over you, you breathe, although not through lungs, through pores, your oxygen is now ocean water. You don't quite figure out where you are or who you are, you just know that you're not where you're supposed to be or maybe exactly where you're supposed to be. Now these stories are not the same, they're not two versions of one book or one story, but perhaps they are. Perhaps they are actually two different stories by two different authors that really pull you into the feeling of isolation and alienation as a result of your gender identity, your racial identity, or your sexual identity. The first story I explained to you is that of Fludgelings by Octavia Butler, a story in which a 10-year-old black vampire, I should clarify, she presents as 10, wakes up in a cave with no memory of who she was, how she existed, who she existed with, or how she got there. Eventually she stumbles out of the cave after having fed herself and healing and stumbles upon who will be a human symbiont for her. Through trial and error and what she believes are her own instincts, she discovers that she is a vampire who has been bred with human genetics so that she may have black skin in order to survive the daylight as well as not having to sleep throughout the day. However, as a result of this, there are some people who are incredibly, incredibly angry about this and wish to take her out. In the process, they slaughter her entire family, attempt to kill her and her human symbionts as well as those that she adopted of her parents, her father specifically, and the new vampire family she ends up staying with. The second story I told you is a story called Broken from the Colony from Ada M. Patterson. This is a story about a young woman who survived Hurricane Dorian that hit Barbados. She survived this hurricane because she's a trans woman and the estrogen that she was taking allowed her and other trans women to survive the devastation of the hurricane by becoming a part of the ocean. Ultimately, the character that we follow primarily through Broken from the Colony is a member of a coral colony. Throughout the story, you find that she has flashbacks and is currently trying to cope with her now coral-like body to figure out who exactly she is or was and what her new identity is. Like I said previously, through both of these stories, we as the readers can feel to the best of our abilities the isolation that has resulted from hundreds of thousands of years of systematic racism, as well as systematic homophobia and transphobia. I'm going to talk a little bit about the authors now because I think it's important for you to understand the context of the authors in order to understand the weight of the stories. Beginning with Octavia Butler, Octavia Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her mother and grandmother took care of her primarily. She was born into a lower economic state and stayed that way for the majority of her life. As a matter of fact, when she started writing and publishing books, she would wake up at 2 a.m. to allow time for her to write in the morning and then go to work. She often worked an array of what some might consider more menial jobs, but unfortunately, writing full-time never was her career before her passing. She passed in 2006, and before her passing, she published a multitude of books. Her first book was published in 1976. In growing up in poverty with her mother and grandmother, her grandmother, who was a maid, would often try and find free books for her by essentially dumpster diving or going through the people who she worked for's books and asking if she could give this to her granddaughter. In the process of doing so, Octavia grew an insatiable imagination. At the age of 12, she begged her mother for a typewriter, which she ultimately received. In an interview, Octavia states that a lot of her early writing had to do with her feelings of powerlessness. Although Fledgling is not one of Octavia's earliest pieces, I think you can see a lot of that powerlessness that Octavia May has felt as a Black woman, especially knowing the period that Octavia survived, including civil liberties and civil rights movement. Ultimately, she passed away before she could see any true growth in racial inequity, but if not for Octavia Butler's work in Afrofuturism, I don't know that some of these conversations would be had today. In a review on TEDx of her work, the author states that she brought a lot of nuance and depth to the representation of people's experiences, specifically her character's experiences. If you know anything about other works by Octavia Butler, you can definitely identify with that. Octavia was really skilled in understanding what it felt like to be a minority and the specific experiences that are attributed to that, and brought that out in her literature in a way that virtually anybody could really identify with. Moving on to Ada M. Patterson. Ada was born in 1994 and is still living. Ada prefers they-she pronouns, just for the context of continuing this podcast. They were born in Barbados, although they have done a lot of work in London and Rotterdam. This is because they received the majority of their collegiate education in the UK, and then moved on to Rotterdam for their master's program. In an interview, Ada talked about, and I quote, the desires I have for my practice are deeply entangled with my relationship to the sea. Being raised in Barbados, floundering between the calm of the Caribbean Sea and the turbulence of the Atlantic, I am reminded of how much dissonance the sea can hold, which I think is really poignant, especially in context of the writing, Broken from the Colony. The majority of the story takes place underwater, and you can really feel that turbulence, not only of the water, but the turbulence and inner turmoil, pardon me, that the main character faces in the story. So I found it really interesting that Ada, in this interview, specifically discussed how she uses the sea as an example for her writing. In my, pardon me, in my presentation, where this audio will be linked, I'm also going to link a couple of different photo sets that Ada did. Ada tends to use multimedia forms as their preferred art form, so they write, obviously, but they also do lots of photography and visual arts, sculpting, sewing, et cetera, et cetera. So I will have a couple of their photo shoots and then some of their multimedia art linked, because I think that it's important in visualizing the story. Both of them, I think, have a lot of emotional weight related to the photography and the multimedia art forms that she uses. So it's not necessarily a picture to help tell the story, but I think it's important to understand the emotions of the story. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and move on specifically to the through lines of these books, well, one book and then one short story. So the first one I want to talk about is the feelings of alienation through sexual and gender identity as people of color, specifically women of color. So Shori, as I previously stated, is the main character of Octavia Butler's Fledgling. She presents as a 10-year-old Black vampire, but in reality, she's 56 years old. Keep in mind that the vampires in the story live up to 200, 300 years plus, so her being 56 is actually still quite young, hence why she looks like a 10-year-old. But there is a lot of discourse and disagreement and violence as a result of her being Black specifically. And as you read the book, you can begin to feel Shori's isolation as she finds other vampire communities. She doesn't find anybody who looks quite like her. She does have the opportunity to interact with one of her brothers, but her brother still quite is not as Black as her. He was also the result of some kind of genetic engineering, but they couldn't quite get him to where Shori was, which is what makes Shori so exemplary, but also what makes her a threat to some people. There's a quote specifically that I want to talk about. Let's see here. Okay, so there is a quote from the book that says, or it's happening speaking about the violence, because Shori is Black and racists, probably Ina racists, don't like that that's a good part of the answer to your daytime problems is melanin. What I think is kind of funny, not in the way that it's funny comedically, but it seems funny because I just think that that is such a common problem, even with racism now. If you think about it, what is really happening to those who are racist? What's their thought process there? Because I contain more melanin than you, not me specifically, but because somebody might contain more melanin than you or less melanin than you or have a slight accent, they wage all of this violence for what they want, for their own power. And I think that Octavia Butler just does a really beautiful, poignant job in this. I'm talking about kind of like, I don't know, the hilarity of racism, not to say that racism by any means is a hilarious topic, but it just is so like unfathomable. And I think that that quote does a good job of like, really bringing it down to real language in a way that feels accessible, but also helps you to understand the alienation and the absurdity and the alienation and the absurdity. That's the word I was looking for, the absurdity of racism. Additionally, Shuri is pansexual and takes both human and male symbionts, which becomes Shuri's life source. She also has several discussions with some of her elders upon encountering elders about whether or not she can mate with female vampires. And the way that the elders approach her feels very much like internalized homophobia, which she then begins to feel, you know, additional alienation from, right? Like Shuri has completely lost her family. She has no resources to learn how to be a vampire, let alone what is good and what is not good. Not that any sexuality is or isn't good, but she no longer has those resources or those examples. So she's kind of figuring things out on her own. She's setting a new precedence as this extraordinary, pardon me, extraordinary vampire with extraordinary power, but also extraordinary sexuality. And I think that there's something so beautiful about that, that for her, it's not even a question, but the power that comes from that, the trust, the family that she grows is just so beautiful. And then when we're examining Broken from the Colony and the alienation, it's a little more obvious, I think, when you're reading Broken from the Colony. There's a quote specifically that the main character is having a flashback to when she was in a store with her father and the clerk is talking to her and her father and the clerk misgenders her. And this quote, the main character says he let his daughter die in his mouth because rather than explaining that his daughter is transgender, he misgenders his own daughter, deadnames her to this clerk. And I think, again, that that is so poignant about the loss that these people that, pardon me, of the loss of family or just comfort systems or community that people lose in effort to become who they really are. Even their own family, right, doesn't always make the effort to help them blossom into the person that they really are. This next quote, that's basically just a couple sentences later in the story, says the clerk patted the head of a ghost only she could see. She couldn't understand what, pardon me, only she could see. And I also think that that's really beautiful, right, that the main character of Broken from the Colony leaves her old identity behind and is blossoming into this beautiful new woman. And in the process of doing so, she loses a portion of herself, but that portion of herself is the only portion that people really want to be identified with, however tragic that may be. It is also important to mention that the character in Broken from the Colony is pansexual. She talks about some of her sexual experiences throughout Broken from the Colony. And that is used as an additional tool for isolation. But additionally, on top of the main character being transgendered in an island that is slightly more conservative, she's now this pansexual transgender woman. And the fear that that elicits amongst the community is astounding. But there's this moment before the hurricane breaks out where she's just dancing on the island by herself and feels so free and so fully herself in the midst of this chaos while everybody else on the island is panicking. And I think that that is just such a beautiful metaphor for the queer existence and the rebellion that queer existence is in the face of such immediate chaos, whether that chaos be through violence or microaggression or internalized homophobia, whatever that might be. I think that that moment where she's just by herself and really feels truly herself and celebrating that is so beautiful and such a beautiful way to talk about that. My next through line is collective trauma. So in both of these stories, we're faced with these main characters that are the characters that they are because of the trauma they endured. So in Shori's case, it's her family being slaughtered by other vampires who are against her existence and then rekindling a relationship with her father only to find that they ultimately are slaughtered. And she then attends to take the living symbionts from her father's colony and the one symbiont she had to another vampire colony where they're also almost eradicated. And in the process, her and her symbionts are almost eradicated. So there's a lot of collective trauma there. There's a lot of trauma bonding. There's a lot of protection amongst their own, whether that be within their own species. In this book, vampires are referred to Ina, so within the Ina species or within her own chosen family, her symbiont family, if you will. There's a lot of collective trauma there, right? And you have to think, too, about how collective trauma is felt through people and through generations. Her mothers, who she was living with, Shori, at the time of her mother's death, were well known throughout the vampire community to be incredible scientists who had been working for quite some time on the existence of a human Ina hybrid for the sake of prolonging their lives. And you can only imagine if that ultimately resulted in their demise, the amount of backlash that they faced in the face of trying to further their own species and perpetuate their own genetics. And then within Broken from the Colony, there's the collective trauma of all the trans women on the island being the only survivors after a horrific, horrific hurricane that did historically, it was Hurricane Dorian specifically, cause an absurd amount of damage to the island of Barbados. So that collective trauma that all of these women share with and then become different parts of the ocean is a very unique form of trauma bonding. But another layer on top of that is that trans women on this island all felt the same level of alienation and discrimination and unhomeliness and then get to experience a colony, a family within each other. There's another quote here that I want to refer to that specifically talks about her relationship with being part of the colony. So bear with me here. Just search through all my quotes here. Okay. Pardon me here. Okay, so in Broken from the Colony, she's discussing um, her feelings at the very beginning of this as part of being a coral colony are very rocky, no pun intended there. She seems happy to be alive and to be part of a greater something, but really distraught at the loss of who she was as the result of that, which again, I think is a beautiful metaphor for the transition of queer, pardon me, of trans folks. But specifically this quote, she says she never wanted to be that, a colony. She wanted a family, sure, but not whatever this was, which I think again, is just really speaks to the emotion of the character in this and the complexity of, you know, this collective trauma that her and the other trans women on the island share that are now forcing them to be a family, but at what cost? At the cost of their home, at the cost of their culture, at the cost of their tradition, right? Which brings me to my next through line, which is that of unhomeliness, specifically in relation to a family unhomeliness. So in both of these stories, the main characters lose everything that they had ever known. So in Shori's case, she wakes up in a cave, completely by herself, not knowing who she is, what her name is, what she is, what she needs to do to survive. None of that. She doesn't know how she ended up there. She doesn't know that she had had family. And so throughout the story, there's a lot of feelings of this unhomeliness. In fact, there is a quote, there's a couple actually that I want to talk about in specific relation to the unhomeliness that Shori felt. The first one is that it felt wrong to me that I was blending around, knowing almost nothing, yet involving other people in my life. The next is that the person I had been was gone. I couldn't bring anyone back, not even myself. I think the second line especially really speaks to that really distinct feeling of unhomeliness, not only from her own family, but from herself, from the land in which she grew up on. She now has to fight for her existence in a whole new place with people she doesn't know or remember, even though she's supposed to. And then it's supposed to figure out how to be an Ina without family guidance. She only meets other female Ina towards the very end of the story. And so I think, you know, granted she finds her new chosen family very similar to that of queer people who are kicked out from their families. She finds a new chosen family, but she now has this knowledge that what she once was, who she once was, where she once was, no longer exists. And I think, like I said, that last quote of, I couldn't bring anyone back, not even myself, really kind of forces you to feel what that alienation would be like. And then in Broken from the Colony, again, we're talking about a person whose home was literally robbed from them as a result of a natural disaster. Everything that she ever knew is no longer, every perspective that she ever had on herself and her growth and who she was and who she was becoming is no longer. She's not even really human anymore. I mean, like I said, she's a part of a coral colony. So she now has to figure out who she is, where she is, and how to heal that in the context of no longer having an actual place or family to belong to. I think that there is a couple of lines within Broken from the Colony that really speak to this. One of them is when she's kind of experiencing this temporal distortion and isn't quite sure who she's existing in, meaning which of her body forms she's existing in. This quote is, which body was she in now? And I think that that speaks to not only the unhomeliness that she's experiencing as a loss of her land, but the unhomeliness that she experiences in her own body. I myself am not transgender, but I can't even begin to imagine what that level of unhomeliness would feel like when you can't even identify with the body that you belong in. The other quote is that there were no empty enclosures, no annex lands. She's talking about Barbados specifically in that line. But I think more than that, she is speaking to the colonization that happened at Barbados, right? No annex lands. So even existing in Barbados felt unholy in a way. It didn't feel like hers. It especially didn't feel like hers because she was a trans woman. And now the earth has taken back what it owns and what it is and is now leaving not even the land that was stolen from them in the first place. So then she becomes part of this earth and this life force that she had no identity with previously. So again, there's so many compounding layers here of unhomeliness related to identity, unhomeliness related to literal loss of land, and unhomeliness related to family. I think there is a couple of important ways that both of these authors utilize different literary elements to tell these stories. I think a really, if not the most important tool is through point of view. So with Shori, her timeline is a little more clearly delineated. And you can tell a little bit better what memory Shori is living through, mostly because the memories of before the cave don't really exist. They're only told to her. It's very clear what time period she is and isn't talking about. But her point of view of having woken up in a cave without any knowledge of who she was, and then her experiencing how to become an Ina and grow into her full Ina self is so important in understanding the through lines of the story. Additionally, in Broken from the Colony, the point of view and the temporal distortion that comes along with the point of view of this main character is so important in understanding the ambiguity of alienation and unhomeliness and the subtlety of it. But it's such a sharp pain. It's loud, but it's subtle. And I think that the author Ada M. Patterson does a really, really good job in Broken from the Colony of using that point of view in a very subtle way so that readers can understand the pain of having your identity ripped from you in so many ways. I think, again, another really important tool is imagery and description, especially in Broken from the Colony. A lot of times you don't know what body the main character is existing in unless the main character is using a description of her own body. So at times she talks about breathing through her pores and then being clogged by algae. Other times she's talking about how her flesh is moving in a scrumptious way because she's going through these changes as a result of hormones. But other times she talks about being on the island with other trans women, and you really can't quite tell what body the main character is existing in unless the author specifically is describing to you the modality of this character. I think, again, with Shuri, the descriptions of her pain are what really, really help you to feel that alienation and that emotional loss and that physical pain of her collective trauma and her alienation. I also think that in both of these stories, the voice, tone, and style—I know these are three different literary elements, but the three of them combined are so important in articulating the different characters' experiences, right? So with Shuri specifically, she looks like a 10-year-old girl, but is actually 56. And the way that she speaks about experience and about life and understanding is so is so unlike what a 10-year-old would. Very mature, very adult. And I think that that's important in understanding that Shuri has a living history. She just doesn't know her own living history. And as the book progresses, certain things about being Ina come back to her, but they're very sparse, and it's not nearly as much knowledge as you know she has. But if not for the way that Shuri talks, I don't think you could fully understand that Shuri had a life that she no longer remembers. I think also I talked a little bit about temporal distortion and the importance that that plays in Broken from the Colony. I think it plays an important role for a multitude of reasons. Like I said, it helps to feel the alienation. It helps to feel the confusion. And I also think, as someone who has experienced trauma, that temporal distortion really helps you to identify with the haze that trauma brings on. I think there's a lot of confusion and loss of identity that severe traumas can bring on or re-shifting of identity. And because of how Ada Patterson specifically chooses to use the main character's voice, the main character's tone, and the style of the story, the style, well, really the style of the main character telling her own story, it really helps for you to feel how distorted and disoriented her reality is. And again, I can only understand this from a perspective of trauma and not even from a trauma related to gender identity. But I think that that even compounds on top of the actual loss of her home. But then also, you can kind of tell throughout the story that she then becomes more accepting of her new body as part of the coral colony in relation to other women that have survived the hurricane with her. And I think that that change of tone and style throughout the story are really important in understanding that. So that's my little podcast episode presentation on the through lines between Fledgling by Octavia Butler and Broken from the Colony by Ada M. Patterson. I hope that you enjoyed. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.