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    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling"
    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling"
    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling"
    Ebook42 pages30 minutes

    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Studentsfor all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781535845724
    A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling"

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      A Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Fledgling" - Gale

      17

      Fledgling

      Octavia E. Butler

      2005

      Introduction

      Fledgling is Octavia Butler's final novel. In this reworking of the vampire genre, the main character, Shori, is a hybrid who looks like an African American child but needs blood to survive. Her story begins with her memory loss after an attack on her family home and continues as she learns about her origins while evading the attackers, who are determined to destroy her and everything she represents. This unique tale explores the concepts of racism and the ethics of genetic engineering while navigating the complexities of different relationships. The themes of love and feminism are woven into Butler's novel as Shori finds the strength to survive and overcome her obstacles.

      Author Biography

      Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947. Her father passed away when she was just a toddler. Butler's family also eventually lost her four brothers. She was raised by her mother and grandmother. Gerry Canavan points out in Octavia E. Butler, Her mother called her ‘Junie,’ but she was ‘Estelle’ to nearly everyone else. Butler's mother worked as a housekeeper. The job initially shamed Butler, but she later appreciated her mother's resourcefulness and survival as a single African American woman.

      Butler began writing when she was young. Despite her struggles with dyslexia, she was an avid reader, developing a love of science fiction as a teenager. She published a few stories in journals and graduated from Pasadena City College in 1968. Butler attended the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop in 1970, where she developed a close relationship with the science-fiction author Harlan Ellison. Her first novel was Patternmaster, published in 1976. Patternmaster introduced the Patternist series, which includes Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), and Clay's Ark (1984).

      Kindred, one of her best-known novels, was published in 1979. Butler won a Hugo Award in 1984 for the story Speech Sounds. She earned another Hugo Award for Bloodchild in 1985 as well as Nebula and Locus awards.

      The Xenogenesis series includes Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). In 1995, she became the first science-fiction author to earn a MacArthur Fellowship. Parable of the Sower followed in 1993 and Parable of the Talents in 1998. Butler left California for Seattle, Washington, in 1999. During the last years of her life, she

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