User Profile

Loads of food for thoughts beside the usual "omg she's such an amazing writer!".

Don't know about Butler politics, but it's pretty obvious she's anti-authoritarian and I love how, through the Oankali, we learn that one of the main flaw of humankind it' around their hierarchical structure.

But, then, she also pushes a lot on this "human nature" which is inherently bad somehow and that really fucks up any socio-political thought. Like, do they kill each other because of hierarchy and shit or just because that's the way they are so nothing really can be done to save them.

And speaking of nature, yeah, due to the story itself, there's loads of talks about reproduction and sex and I know I wasn't going to read a gender-bending book, but she just cling so much to the binary that I cannot even see illusion of feminism?

Compare the protagonist of the first two books.

First one, Lilith, woman. She's used throughout the whole story and in the end she also get an unrequested pregnancy Virgin Mary style which never gets addressed for real.

Second one, Akin, man. He literally goes against millennial old "traditions" of his race by setting up a Human-only colony on Mars despite having basically no allies in the process.

So, yeah, doubts. It would be nice to discuss them with whoever would like to. :)

I was gonna bump up this book regardless of how I felt at the end for including Content Warnings, but now I can't do that because it already at a five-star rating. OH NO!

Yamilet is a closeted lesbian who switches to a private, Catholic School, to help take care of her brother, who is constantly getting into fights.

Yamilet's dad was deported years ago for attending a protest, but they keep in touch.

Yamilet's mother works at a call center, and has a second job running an etsy store (Yamilet helps with this throughout the book) full of Mexican Beadwork. (Look up pictures if you aren't familiar with the practice, they're BEAUTIFUL!) Yamilet is positive her mother will throw her out if she discovers Yamilet is a lesbian, because there's constant homophobic jokes. I promise it gets better.

But anyway, Yamilet meets a Chinese girl, Bo, who is openly gay and constantly getting in trouble for responding to microaggressions (and you know, being gay).

Then Yamilet finds out her brother is queer too, and she starts fake-dating his boyfriend so they're both safe.

But this book moves a bit slow. I wasn't intending to finish it last night, I was at 40% and wanted to finish the book (Libby was guilting me because someone else wanted to read it lol) so I read a couple chapters, and the speed really increases around the time Yamilet goes to a homecoming party, and is constantly in an oblivious lesbian "no way does she like me" sort of thing. It's adorable.

This book gets ROUGH (you saw the warnings), I was personally triggered by a suicide attempt because I've been in Mental Health Inpatient for an attempt before. If you don't know, it kind of sucks to be there! (It does not get that deep into it, this was just my problem).

But it gets better, and it gets FLUFFY by the end. Come for the concept, stay for the fluff and comedy!

5 pages into it and the Ooankali fixed the problem with the male-born humans. i hope they will pass by our version of Earth as well when the time will come.