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She literally has a vampire book. Fledgling. There was clearly supposed to be more but she unfortunately passed away. Kindred is my LEAST favorite book by her. Let me explain. (no shade to the OP like what you like the graphic is really great) Anyway, a thread! 1/6 https://twitter.com/GabyTriana/status/1361360759444418562
Kindred is BY FAR the most recommended OEB book. Parable of the Sower is getting up there since we live in the dystopian hellscape she warned us about. Kindred is still number one and that's a real shame. 2/6
There's nothing wrong with Kindred. It's a fine book. But OEB wrote groundbreaking sci-fi. Was doing biopunk before it was a thing. Was presenting aliens outside of the white male complex. PREDICTED OUR DYSTOPIAN HELLSCAPE. And. . . 3/6
the book she's most known for is the time travel slavery one. She was AMAZING. She was a Black woman writing science fiction like NO ONE ELSE. A BLACK WOMAN! You know how much that meant to someone like me? A weird Black girl? So much. 4/6
And the book that everyone is like, omg you have to read this ONE is her fucking slave narrative! Why not Wildseed with the immortal shapeshifters? Or Lilith's Brood with all the weird aliens?? No, the slavery one is the one. 5/6
And it pains me because so often the narratives of Black people that get the most attention are slavery or civil rights and that's it. And with her work there are just so many other things, RIGHT THERE! And I wish that people shed more light on her other work first. 6/6
I need to add something to this thread. If the first book my mother had given me to read by her had been Kindred, I would have never read another fucking by her. Because as a Black child ALL I ever got was slave narratives.
That is the story we are constantly fed and I did not another book by a Black person about our historical trauma. I was already tired of that shit by 12. So when I say it was important to read her OTHER work, it was really important. It was pivotal for me to see it.
I wouldn't have known it was ok for me even think about writing this weird shit if I hadn't seen her work and I would have totally missed it if it had been funneled to me with yet another slave narrative.
I can't imagine how many other people are dismissing her work because the first thing they're getting is this. And it's not a bad book! It's a good book but it's exhausting to constantly have to rehash this trauma just to see yourself in spec fiction.
If you're wondering what my first one was, it was Clay's Ark. My mom, who doesn't always get me, was like, "I know you like science fiction, this one was written by a Black woman." I didn't understand it because it's the last book in that series but my imagination went wild.
