This Blog Was Written By
Johanna Arias
This past August Ava DuVernay announced that she would be working on a TV adaptation of one of my favorite sci-fi trilogies, The “Lilith’s Brood” trilogy formally know as the Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia Butler. I was ecstatic. As an avid sci-fi reader and women of color, I love the fact the protagonist was a black women named Lilith. She is a strong, smart, capable, beautiful woman with a very heavy burden to bear. The books take place in a post-apocalyptic earth that has been invaded by aliens after a nuclear holocaust and humanity is mere moments away from extinction. Our saviors are called Oankali. They are nomadic space explorers who survive their extensive space journeys by interbreeding with species they come across and they can teach us a thing or too about communication.
The Oankali are ugly. They have worm like tentacles that react to stimuli, they use them to see, most importantly to communicate. They can speak any human language vocally as well. They have a mouth which they use to eat and talk to humans.
Their tentacles can also visually communicate their emotions. It seems to be something they have little control over. The tentacles knot up and contract when upset and look like ugly misshapen bumps. They also smooth themselves against the Oankali's bodies when they are please or aroused. The effect is so complete that it causes them to look like they the have no tentacles for a few moments until they are released.
There are a lot of conflicts between the Oankali and Humans but one recurring source of conflict stems from the differences in communication between the two species. The Oankali use their tentacles to interact with the world around them and to each part of their ecosystem. That means the can use them to talk to their ships, their plants, their animals (think Avatar). When connected to each other they transmit everything emotions, feelings, memories, knowledge, conversations. They do not lie, instead they control information by withholding or not withholding. They literally withhold the information in their bodies or they do not make physical contact with each other.
Humans communicate in a lot of different ways including touch but our communication is limited by what we see, and sometimes feel coming off or out of another person. A common lament among humans is the feeling that a lot of what we are trying to say gets lost in translation. Be that translated to another language of an emotion that you don’t know how to describe. Even when we get close to describing a sensation we don’t quite get it right. The Oankali do not have this problem. They don't even have this problem among each other or to a lesser extent with us. They can connect their tenticles to our nervous system and transmit an endless variety of feelings, emotions and thoughts.
The Oankali also have an amazing sense of smell, eyesight and hearing. This combination is very frightening to humans because at times it seems like the Oankali can read their minds. They can’t. The following quote is some dialog between to of the characters in the book. They are in a room with an Oankali. The first speaker is talking about the Oankali referred to as "it" because it has no gender.
"Can it go?" he whispered. "Just for a while."
"It chooses not to," she said in a normal voice. "And don't bother whispering. It can hear your heartbeat from where it's sitting. It can hear your sub-vocalizations-the things you say to yourself in word but not quite out loud. That may be why you thought it could read minds. And obviously it will not go away."
Often times the Oankali with act according to what they sense our body is telling them and not by what we say. This next exchange [MILD SPOILER ALERT] takes place between two humans and an Oankali. The Oankali has made the female human pregnant without her consent or at least the human equivalent of consent. The male human believes it was wrong in doing so. It's response was that it gave the female want she wanted but she was too afraid to ask for it. It read her emotions and pheromones and body chemistry and determined that she wanted a baby. It did not ask her first. I am in no way implying that it is OK to go around raping or impregnating someone without their knowledge/consent. We are all humans so this argument does not work for us. You can't just go around sniffing people and saying that their pheromones told you the “wanted it.” This is a fictional alien species and by their definition is wasn’t coercion or rape or wrong. They argue that all they do is for our best interests. They are patronizing in that way.
What I find interesting is the implication that humanity as a species is considered to be liars by the Oankali because we cannot or choose not to share our biological feelings. According to the Oankali, we lie to ourselves and each other all the time. How much of this is true? We leave things left unsaid because it is just easier that way.
This past Thanksgiving, how many of us have family members who view the political climate in the US in direct opposition to our own viewpoints. Yet some of us choose to say nothing. We have "No Politics" rules at dinner so we can eat in relative piece. Does this make us liar? According to the Oankali, yes. We lie because lying is easier then the truth. Easier on ourselves, on the other person's feelings, on our family traditions. You could argue that life is more peaceful that way. Sometimes lying is necessary to achieve some noble end. So seeing a species that can communicate in ways so complete that nothing is left open to interpretation is terrifying. The humans feel their way is better but the Oankali have the ultimate trump card, they didn't kill themselves and every living thing on the planet with nuclear bombs. How can we say or communication skills are better?
Sadly Octavia Butler passed away in 2006. Her work is really inspiring and transformative to me. I encourage everyone to check the books out. They are amazing and so nuance. So many other issues come up in the book. Consent, procreation, gender, what it means to be human, intelligence in the hands of a hierarchical society, second chances, love, family and race. Things that I might have alluded to hear but didn't have the time to flesh out. You will not be able to put the books down.
Johanna Arias
This past August Ava DuVernay announced that she would be working on a TV adaptation of one of my favorite sci-fi trilogies, The “Lilith’s Brood” trilogy formally know as the Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia Butler. I was ecstatic. As an avid sci-fi reader and women of color, I love the fact the protagonist was a black women named Lilith. She is a strong, smart, capable, beautiful woman with a very heavy burden to bear. The books take place in a post-apocalyptic earth that has been invaded by aliens after a nuclear holocaust and humanity is mere moments away from extinction. Our saviors are called Oankali. They are nomadic space explorers who survive their extensive space journeys by interbreeding with species they come across and they can teach us a thing or too about communication.
The Oankali are ugly. They have worm like tentacles that react to stimuli, they use them to see, most importantly to communicate. They can speak any human language vocally as well. They have a mouth which they use to eat and talk to humans.
There are a lot of conflicts between the Oankali and Humans but one recurring source of conflict stems from the differences in communication between the two species. The Oankali use their tentacles to interact with the world around them and to each part of their ecosystem. That means the can use them to talk to their ships, their plants, their animals (think Avatar). When connected to each other they transmit everything emotions, feelings, memories, knowledge, conversations. They do not lie, instead they control information by withholding or not withholding. They literally withhold the information in their bodies or they do not make physical contact with each other.
Humans communicate in a lot of different ways including touch but our communication is limited by what we see, and sometimes feel coming off or out of another person. A common lament among humans is the feeling that a lot of what we are trying to say gets lost in translation. Be that translated to another language of an emotion that you don’t know how to describe. Even when we get close to describing a sensation we don’t quite get it right. The Oankali do not have this problem. They don't even have this problem among each other or to a lesser extent with us. They can connect their tenticles to our nervous system and transmit an endless variety of feelings, emotions and thoughts.
The Oankali also have an amazing sense of smell, eyesight and hearing. This combination is very frightening to humans because at times it seems like the Oankali can read their minds. They can’t. The following quote is some dialog between to of the characters in the book. They are in a room with an Oankali. The first speaker is talking about the Oankali referred to as "it" because it has no gender.
"Can it go?" he whispered. "Just for a while."
"It chooses not to," she said in a normal voice. "And don't bother whispering. It can hear your heartbeat from where it's sitting. It can hear your sub-vocalizations-the things you say to yourself in word but not quite out loud. That may be why you thought it could read minds. And obviously it will not go away."
Often times the Oankali with act according to what they sense our body is telling them and not by what we say. This next exchange [MILD SPOILER ALERT] takes place between two humans and an Oankali. The Oankali has made the female human pregnant without her consent or at least the human equivalent of consent. The male human believes it was wrong in doing so. It's response was that it gave the female want she wanted but she was too afraid to ask for it. It read her emotions and pheromones and body chemistry and determined that she wanted a baby. It did not ask her first. I am in no way implying that it is OK to go around raping or impregnating someone without their knowledge/consent. We are all humans so this argument does not work for us. You can't just go around sniffing people and saying that their pheromones told you the “wanted it.” This is a fictional alien species and by their definition is wasn’t coercion or rape or wrong. They argue that all they do is for our best interests. They are patronizing in that way.
What I find interesting is the implication that humanity as a species is considered to be liars by the Oankali because we cannot or choose not to share our biological feelings. According to the Oankali, we lie to ourselves and each other all the time. How much of this is true? We leave things left unsaid because it is just easier that way.
This past Thanksgiving, how many of us have family members who view the political climate in the US in direct opposition to our own viewpoints. Yet some of us choose to say nothing. We have "No Politics" rules at dinner so we can eat in relative piece. Does this make us liar? According to the Oankali, yes. We lie because lying is easier then the truth. Easier on ourselves, on the other person's feelings, on our family traditions. You could argue that life is more peaceful that way. Sometimes lying is necessary to achieve some noble end. So seeing a species that can communicate in ways so complete that nothing is left open to interpretation is terrifying. The humans feel their way is better but the Oankali have the ultimate trump card, they didn't kill themselves and every living thing on the planet with nuclear bombs. How can we say or communication skills are better?
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