Week Twelve: Writing Assignment

Majoritarian culture is defined as a culture resulting from the influence majority. Unfortunately, it doesn't always mean the majority. Societal concepts define what majorities and minorities are, especially when it's considering race. Therefore, there tends to be an overarching lack of minority voice in majoritarian culture because of majority overshadowing. Thankfully, we got mostly a nice reprieve this week while reading Dawn by Octavia Butler. This book begins by introducing us to the main character, Lilith, isolated in a room for what seems like years on end. We find out that after nuclear fallout, Earth as we know it has been destroyed and the remaining human race has been "collected" by an alien race called the Oankali. Lilith has been chosen to teach and integrate the remaining humans back into their new surroundings on the Oankali space craft. Lilith lives with an Oankali family for a while and learn about their culture and finds out why they've brought humans onto the ship. The Oankali seem to be gelatinous, humanoid creatures covered in thousands of small flagella like tentacles. Although humanoid, their appearance takes Lilith quite some time to get used to so they seal Lilith in with the people she is going to usher into their new life so as not to cause a revolt. The Oankali's end goal is to mix genes with humans and repopulate an earth with an Oankali-Human hybrid.

In Dawn, Lilith is a strong and confident woman. She is entrusted with the Oankali's plans and they believe that she is the best candidate to lead the humans into a new future. She is also black. Sadly, it's not often that we see a strong, black character represented in today's media. Society is slowly getting better about race representation in books, television, and movies but it's really far too slow. 

Conversely, this book does tend to package everything as far as gender relations and sexuality under the same guise as the majoritarian culture today. The book really does categorize everything as male and female. Even those the Oankali have a third gender called the ooloi, why would an alien race be male or female anyways? It's just seems a little gender normative for something that is literally not from this world. Especially with how they gene trade. I feel like over time they would have evolved into something completely different. And how do they even fit in those roles? The Oankali don't really have sex organs so how does one distinguish male from female. Also, once the humans are together along with Lilith in the "desensitizing" room, they begin to "pair" off together. One man and one woman immediately begin shacking up in the area. After nuclear war and as many years as humans seems to have existed on the Oankali ship, it's hard to believe that all of the humans that they recused were straight. 

So, although this book breaks some majoritarian values, it still aligns itself with other ones. All in all, it was an interesting book, but that I am not likely to come back to again.