Books

First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "To Yvette, best wishes, Octavia E. Butler". Though unmarked as such, the recipient was Yvette Le Roy, the founder of Liberty House in Harlem. Alongside promoting books by Black authors, her store sold handcrafts produced by the Mississippi Poor People's Corporation and hosted poetry readings by authors such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Nikki Giovanni. This is the second instalment in Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, all of which were nominated for a Locus award. The trilogy begins with the death of humanity, brought about by increasing environmental abuse, international hostility, and eventual nuclear holocaust. Lilith Iyapo, a Black woman, is resurrected from the embers of post-apocalyptic Earth by the powerful alien race of Oankali, who offer her the choice to continue the future of her people by interbreeding with their species. Adulthood Rites is the story of Lilith's son Akin, a hybrid "construct" of human and Oankali birth who must come to terms with his dual heritage and negotiate for humanity's right to live and breed on Mars without Oankali intervention. Butler was the first Black woman to receive both the Nebula and Hugo awards and was the first science fiction author granted a MacArthur fellowship. Her work "creates powerful images of black women in a genre in which and from which they have traditionally been marginalized and excluded" (Boutler, p. 170). Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, spine lettered in gilt, board sides and endpapers red. With dust jacket. Spine ends and upper corners bumped, lower edges rubbed with spot of wear, a few marks to edges, spot of rubbing to rear cover; tape repairs to edges of unclipped jacket, rear panel soiled: a very good copy in good jacket. Amanda Boulter, "Polymorphous Futures", American Bodies: Cultural Histories of the Physique, 1996.

Adulthood Rites, the second book in Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis series, explores themes of identity, transformation, and human-alien coexistence.