Friday Linkup time! We have Six Word Summary, Book Beginnings hosted by Rose City Reader, and The Friday 56 hosted by Freda’s Voice. Today’s featured book is Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler, which collects the three books in the Xenogenesis series, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago.

Nuclear war results in alien intervention.

ALIVE!

Still alive.

Alive…again.

Awakening was hard, as always. It was a struggle to take in enough air to drive off the nightmare sensation of asphyxiation.

Tino, he’s too valuable for this. He’s teaching us what a Human-born male can be. There are still so few like him because we’re too unsure to form a consensus–

Thoughts so far: What I like about Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is similar to what I like about Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give—that is, its look at humanity, what it means to be human, and in what ways we view others as human or inhuman.

In the world of Lilith’s Brood, humans have destroyed the world in nuclear war. Aliens called the Ooankali have saved people who were left from nuclear winter. The problem is, now, that the only way for humans to procreate is by mixing their DNA with that of the Ooankali. This raises questions about what it means to be human, and also the relative importance of genetic legacy.

However, making these genetic mixes is risky business, as we see with the 56. The Ooankali aren’t entirely sure what to expect, especially when it comes to the genetic mix for males. This seems to be commentary of the unsure volatility of maleness, but I’m open to different interpretations.

What are you reading this weekend?