Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

In class we read Bloodchild by Octavia Butler - not the cheeriest of stories.  To start with, we have children, probably teenagers, being fed drug-like eggs by an alien. Then we have our protagonist lying against (hanging out with) a massive slug-like alien. The alien, T’Gatoi, has a motherly attitude towards the brothers and sisters (who I’m assuming are teenagers) and authority over them. Then we have a man being sliced open and worms being pulled out of him - they’re the babies of the big slugs. That’s fun. We learn that humans are kept around on this alien planet to “host” the babes of the T’lic, meaning having slugs grow in their body (and risking the slugs eating the host if the extraction doesn’t happen soon enough). T’Gatoi has been raising our protagonist, Gan, to host her babies, and though there is some sort of love between the two, this is not a healthy relationship.

Bloodchild, in my opinion, explores the idea of the velvet cage. These humans came to the world of the T’lic under desperate circumstances. Gan and his family live in comfort provided by the T’lic (I don’t know if they have to work). Humans in the Preserve are treated well, as second-class citizens but appreciated nonetheless. On the other hand, some humans like Gan have to be implanted and host the eggs of the T’lic. They don’t have control over their own bodies. Even getting past the grossness of it all, this is by our standards a violation of human rights. They can’t even escape from the Preserve, and the outside world of the T’lic is even harsher to humans.

Furthermore, the relationship between T’Gatoi and Gan is insidious. T’Gatoi raised Gan for a purpose, and her love for Gan is under the stipulation that Gan will fulfill that purpose. Gan becomes alienated from T’Gatoi once she sees the extraction gone wrong, realizing that the babies of the T’lic will always be first priority over humans.