Wild Seed

i went into this book w/ high expectations—i know the patternmaster series is hanif abdurraqib’s favorite by octavia, and based on my own readings of her, i hoped it would be good.

and………………. it was!!! even though based on context clues i kind of knew where each section of the story was going to go, it was very engrossing and i found it quite difficult to put down. and let me tell you, it is SO satisfying to read full characters that have realistic interactions and are set in a world that makes sense!!! thank you again octavia butler!!!

i very quickly kind of assigned like “okay doro=colonialism and anyanwu=pre-colonialism?” and i think this kind of holds true! my issue w/ the xenogenesis series was that for a while i was looking at it like humans are everything horrible and the oankali are everything great, but this fell apart towards the end of the series, as i realized that what is best is a combination of the two. and i think that this also slightly falls apart w/ my ideas of doro and anyanwu, but not for the same reasons. 

i saw this tweet the other day that was like “stop romanticizing pre-colonial indigenous communities, they were flawed too,” and that made me think about wild seed. i wrote a note at one point that said something something “the real abomination is the way they kill disabled kids that they have created,” (which im kind of realizing now is that anyanwu was saying) and i also think that this is true! all of this is why anyanwu’s way of life is so needed—so the incest and killing can stop, so the people can heal and be supported and create sustainable generations. but also how can you just ignore their potential, their abilities? especially when these abilities could ease pain, could allow for continued evolution? which is where a little sprinkle of doro comes in—not his murdering, not his white supremacy, but his ambition, his active shaping of change (but again not even the way he shaped change lmao). it literally all just comes back to earthseed!!!! and that is how i know it’s the answer

 i also wasn’t entirely a fan of the “she’s taken captive by him but learns to forgive and now she loves him,” trope, growing up reading wattpad fanfics i saw a LOT. of tropes like this that were just misogyny (a specific one comes to mind where a girl is taken hostage by zayn from one direction to be his enslaved secs worker LMAO)… but i think wild seed is like literally the only exception lol. it’s the only story that COULD work, that DOES work—so far, at least. of course, waiting to save my judgements on if the “now she loves him” section feels true for later in the series. 

all in all i liked this book a lot!! after reading it i’ve had some realizations about my goals and aspirations in life, and reading wild seed has helped me question that in what i feel is a positive direction. looking forward to reading the rest of the series in time.

I should start by saying that I am not a fan of science fiction. As a result, there might be a lot that I have missed in this novel. I always struggled with whatever was related with eugenics and I feel that it is very much the center of this book, except that it is also surrounded by a heavy context of slavery.

Overall, I am very confused about this novel. I am unable to decide whether I liked it or not. It is hard to enter into it but once I did, it was harder to put it down. However, if I can sort of guess the underlying messages and directions of the book, it was difficult to get out of the very harsh and tough tales of Doro's cruelty long enough to fully grasp them. Some interpretations of this book seem to see it as a love story. Never before have I read one in which I was rooting for one to kill the other. Anyanwu is an exceptional character, so full of contradiction and strength. I was only hoping that she would have been strong enough to kill Doro.

Anyway, it is a novel that does not leave one indifferent. Maybe reading the other books of the series would help in understanding this one.