A Short Commentary on Fledgling

I was curious about why Octavia Butler decided to title her book Fledgling, so I did a little research on my favorite reference site, good ol' dictionary.com. Apparently, the term refers to a person who is inexperienced. How fitting. The story begins as a first person narrative in which the speaker is unaware of who they are, where they are, and what it even means to be alive. Ahh amnesia. While it is certainly an interesting way to start the book, it is also an easy ploy to instantly grab the attention of the reader. I suppose I was feeling a bit skeptical after having finished Twilight, so I was unable to approach this reading assignment without having doubts. And then, a mere twenty pages in the book, a grown man is having sex with a child. I have to give Butler credit, at least realizes how effective shock value is at piquing one's interest. And of course we find out later on that the protagonist is actually in her fifties, regardless of her physical appearance. But at the moment of the actual sex act, the characters as well as the audience were unaware of that fact.

While I found myself drawn into the plot line due to the fast paced movement in action sequences, and page after page of dialogue (which always proves for a quick read), there were no instances of eloquently constructed prose. However, unlike Meyer's unwitting subscription to gender coding and issues of the binary relation between females and males, it can be noted that Butler purposely dealt with countering stigmas. The main character, Shori, has black skin pigmentation from genetic encoding of human DNA, and because of this, there are others in the Ina population that want her dead. This is an obvious example of how racist ideologies have become institutionalized into the culture to the point that they influence those who belong to a more conservative mindset to seek to erase the "problem". This correlates to the issues that African Americans experienced in the slavery era, as well as the Jim Crow period, and unfortunately, that they still experience today.

The novel also deals with other stigmatized subjects, including sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender. Again, she does so by making them a part of the main character's personality. When Shori decides to invite a woman to become one of her symbionts (a human being that she receives nourishment from, as well as emotional comfort), her first, Wright, questions her motives, jokingly asking whether she "swings both ways". The joke is lost on Shori, proving its unimportance. For her, one's gender is irrelevant, and being sexually attracted to a person of the same sex doesn't have an impact on who she is as a person, or rather, as an Ina.

In general, I can say that I enjoyed reading this book. I wouldn't read it again, nor would I recommend it to fellow readers, but it was entertaining, none the less.