“Wild Seed” Octavia M. Butler

An English professor of mine, Amy Walsh, introduced me to the writing of Octavia Butler last year by requiring the book “Kindred” in the Minority Literature class I took as part of my Spanish degree. I fell in love with literature classes while getting my degree, something I am sure I would not have appreciated if I had taken them in my teens and twenties instead of in my forties and fifties. There were two Minority Lit classes being offered that semester, one required six books while the one I took required nine, and I am sure that I am the only student who specifically chose the class where we would read more. I’m a geek that way in case you hadn’t noticed. I had never read Erdrich---although I don’t know why not---and I had never heard of Cisneros or Butler, so I am thankful to Professor Walsh for introducing me to those and other writers.

“Wild Seed” is not the sort of book that I would just pick up and read, but knowing that it was written by the same author as was “Kindred” led me to buy it at Powell’s Book Store in Portland this February. The book I bought is an omnibus---so really I bought four books in one which should appease the gods who frown on people who don’t keep their resolutions---it contains the four patternist novels “Wild Seed,” Mind of My Mind,” “Clay’s Ark” and “Patternmaster.” These along with “Kindred” make up five of the twelve novels Butler wrote before she died in 2006. I am a fan of science fiction, but have not found any fantasy that I like yet, so reading about humans that are not quite human is somewhat of a stretch for me. But, it’s Octavia Butler, and she finds such interesting and surprising situations to put people into so that they have to ask questions bigger than themselves, it doesn’t even seem like I’m reading fantasy.

The issues faced by the people in “Wild Seed” are similar to those in “Kindred”: slavery, race, gender, sexuality and finding purpose in life. The main characters are a four-millennium-year-old spirit who inhabits body after body and is called Doro. Although he can take the body of a man or woman, it seems that he is male by nature. His counterpart is a four-century-old woman named Anyanwu. Doro had some sort of psychic abilities when he was born and was not accepted by his community. In a physical transformation when he was 13, he died and then he took over the body of another person so his spirit would live on. During the last 4000 years he has tried to gather and breed people who are different like he was. He is always seeking out these unusual people, and in the process he discovered Anyanwu living in a village in Africa. Anyanwu appears to be human, and her essence is female, but she has more control over her body than other people do. Other reviews called her a shape shifter, but that is not terminology that Butler used, and think Anyanwu’s ability to understand and control her body on a molecular level and build medicines based on that is overlooked if we simply call her a shape shifter. She ages herself over time so that villagers will accept her, but her natural form is that of a compact young female black woman.

“Wild Seed” and “Kindred” are both set in the past of the U.S., but while the characters in “Kindred” step back in time to slavery, the story of Doro and Anyanwu spans from 1690 to 1840 and from upstate New York to southern Louisiana, so slavery and race are important issues throughout the book. The two main characters each take on the bodies of white and black, male and female, sometimes out of convenience and sometimes for a purpose. As in “Kindred” the question of whether a person can belong to another comes up again and again and not just whether a slave can be owned but also belonging due to ties of family loyalty, love and mind control. Gender and sexuality are pushed around a bit here, but the question is more about whether an innate gender is important or not, and not about homosexuality. In fact, procreation is such a vital part of the story, raising the issue of homosexuality would have been out of place. In a more subtle way, the book poses the question of whether a person should chose their vocation or it should be chosen for them. Each character answers these questions in different ways, and Butler does not supply a universal answer, but as with most good books, the juicy questions are there.

I am not afraid to say that I like a good story, a building of tension, climax, resolution, the whole shebang. I think my reading tastes are a little above the pedestrian, but I like a romping good tale like the next person. That said, I liked the story of “Wild Seed,” and I liked it better than the one in “Kindred.” In “Kindred” the premise drew me in, the story was good for awhile, but the reading had become a little tedious---I got into that mode of skipping ahead looking for the good bits. In “Wild Seed” there was always something new to learn, something more about Doro or Anyanwu’s past lives, a new member of the family or community, a new situation each had gotten into and out of, and so the reading was always interesting. Since “Wild Seed” was the first novel in a book that contains four novels, I didn’t notice I was getting to the end, and it was over before I knew it. A sign of a good story. I have read the first sentence of “Mind of My Mind,” and it is definitely a hook that has grabbed me and won’t let go. I would tell you what the sentence is here, but it is somewhat of a spoiler for “Wild Seed.” Get the book and find out for yourself.