First off, I would love for other people to pick up and make little discussion threads as they go through books; it's getting a bit breezy in here and I would love to see some more activity.

Thus far, however, the only book I've been reading has been Octavia Butler's Dawn, which has ended up being a bit different than I expected. I knew the author had a reputation for writing challenging, multicultural stories with a lot of gay and lesbian characters, but Lilith's Brood (or at least the first book) seems to focus more on just the question of what it is to be human, what it is to have a particular path to your survival forced upon you, to have your traits and qualities exploited against your will, and to be denied the opportunity of interacting with those who might share some amount of understanding with you.

I'm really enjoying it. I find it engaging and immersive, in a way that somehow, slightly, reminds me of Mass Effect. It isn't showy; Lilith is not inherently charismatic, but often seems rather temperamental, inclined to find fault with her captors in a world that I would be accustomed to viewing with awe and curiosity. Yet it is precisely this which makes her a compelling protagonist - because she is caught, helpless, in a society which is more interested in the continuation of her species than in her own individual needs, and because she calls upon us to examine this cognitive dissonance we experience between an alien, unfamiliar world we might like to explore, and her own experience of utter discomfort within it. She is not a noble hero; rather, she exhibits an honest need of respect and self-agency.

Butler chooses subtle ways of expressing this, ways which could be seen as clever or humorous in another context. When Jdahya remarks that she had "not just a cancer, but a talent for cancer," my initial response was to laugh. But in truth, that these aliens would view her and her species as worth continuing only for the sake of harvesting a disease for their own benefit is dismal and dismissive. In such an environment, it is a struggle to retain one's sense of individuality, and Butler excels at capturing this struggle.

I am curious of the degree to which others feel this might apply to race or other dimensions of identity within real life. My gut instinct is to say that it does not, but I would be interested in hearing opinions to the contrary, or examining what I might be missing.