Dawn began as a story about difference, about otherness, in accordance to a different species, and evolved into a critique on otherness as a part of social and racial perception. Butler artfully sculpts a disturbing gallery of experiences that causes the vicarious reader to be as, if not more so, uncomfortable as Lilith, Joseph, and even Curt.
Lilith’s terror towards the aliens is directly related to Cut’s paranoia surrounding his view of Lilith. The common strain is this idea of difference – whether it be race, species, or supposedly superior knowledge, the state of inequality is one of intense discomfort. Perhaps it is from this discomfort that Butler herself feels the need, in both Dawn and Parable of the Sower, to incessantly pair each female and male with their corresponding counterpart. It almost seems as a courtesy to the characters to provide some sort of sexual normalcy among the chaos.
And here, we come to touch upon another point. The intense overtones of sexuality – whether it be purely human-based, or a hybridization including the ooloi – brings on the dichotomy of discomfort and comfort. On some levels the human body in Dawn is simply a way to calm oneself and escape fear, or at least share it with another. In another sense, the three-way connectivity of the male/female/ooloi bond comes off as both transcendent and dually almost disturbing.
On a race level, I found it incredibly interesting that the only dark-skinned female was the automatic leader chosen by another species to represent the human race - once again we return to the matriarchal form. There is a deep connection between Lilith and earth, and her need to return reveals the intensity of the bond.
This is covered in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” as being an expected trope of a Black woman, but what interested me was the role Joseph played because of the tropic characterization of his mate. The obvious criticism here is that he became almost a subordinate of Lilith, the weakness and doubt of the entire clan stemming from a supposed inability to discern earth from space maybe because of their lack of “Blackness.”
It is also interesting to note that this is not so much white/black juxtaposition as it is a black/other contrast. And to further this point, it is a male/female comparison, a playing and melding of gender roles. The most blaring omission to all of this, covered in “Mama’s Baby,” is the lack of a Black, patriarchal male. Where Parable had Bankole, there seems no male foil to stand opposite Lilith as she leads her unsuccessful matriarchy to earth – without her. Maybe this, then, explains itself. The matriarch successfully leads everyone – to her own destruction and abandonment.
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