Bloodchild Response

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?

In all honesty I was very shocked by the subject manner within in this story. It would be an understatement to say that I never expected male interspecies pregnancy to be featured in a required reading for school but I can appreciate the oddness in a way. The story itself was actually pretty interesting in how the author choses to resolve the conflict and the large implications of that decision. When Gan is confronted with the awful truth of what Tlic impregnation does to it's host as well as the subjugation of the human race as a whole, he does not chose to revolt and kill T'Gatoi. He does not kill himself to escape as he considers, or even allow T'Gatoi to move the responsibility onto his sister. He comes to a realization that this is the price he pays so that his family receives the necessary protection from T'Gatoi to survive on an alien planet. He also decides it would be selfish to transfer that act and wants to protect his sister from that kind of pain. As an older sibling who unfortunately lost my younger brother a few years back, I understand better than anyone wanting to protect family from harm at the cost of yourself. I really respect that about Gan's decision and it makes the cruelty of the ending easier to understand. Although I am curious about the fact that he seems to be in love with the creature that will cause him pain. It creates a strange ambiguity in the message of the story.

2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect?

Despite the protagonist being male, I connected to the feminine aspects of what he was dealing with. In this story the gender roles are somewhat reversed as men give birth to the Tlic's babies and the ruling aliens seem to be all female. By reversing the roles like this, it highlights how women are often see as nothing more than hosts in our patriarchal society even to this day. The true pain and risks of childbirth are often ignored in mainstream society and having children is both seen as a virtue and sometimes as a vice depending who you ask. Women are pressured to have children from a young age and it's still seen as a deviance if a women doesn't want to become a mother. However that doesn't mean that mothers get off easy. If you want to be a mother, it's often at the expense of your other ambitions as an individual as unfortunately statistically most child labor is still executed by the mother even if she and her husband are both working. Mothers often have to put their careers aside and lose opportunities to advance in order to take care of your kids. Not to mention that some working women actually look down at mothers as being foolish for doing this. It's the typical dilemma of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Not to mentions the risks of birth complications that can lead to many sorts of heartache. It is said that having children is like cutting out your heart and releasing it to wander about.  We see this same dichotomy reflected in the story as Gan realizes that if he doesn't bare T'Gatoi's children he puts his family at risk and if he does he puts himself at risk. Reading this story, I connected through my own anxieties as a young woman about having children in the future and how deeply it could affect my life in either positive or negative.

3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you choose; what changes would you make?

I think this story would work best as a short film, but there's also a lot of potential as a feature if you make enough changes to stretch out the story. I could easily see this as a horror film where the scary interspecies birth is hinted at but not fully revealed in the end. I would expand the story to show more of the daily life of the humans and the low build up the inequality in this symbiotic relationship.  I imagine building up the world where humans aren't more than glorified pets and there are limited options for humans in terms of career choices or other markers of independence. You could possibly put more time into Gan trying to find a way to escape before he realized at the end there is no where to go and nothing he can do about his fate. I think it would be interesting if he met another human male who was dealing with the same dilemma and he is able to observe the other male's attempted escape and resulting tragic ending. Maybe it could be the same man he was forced to watch give birth? I would also like to expand on Gan's relationship with his mother. It seems like she's really against the actions of the Tlic and it suggests at an interesting history that resulted in her resistance, possibly having to do with the death of her husband. Her relationship with her son would also be interesting to explore in depth as it seems she resents the fact that T'Gatoi has taken her place as the mother figure and seems to emotionally distance herself from her son to cope. 

4. Are there elements of this work that you would consider afto-futurist?

Other than the names of the character, there aren't other markers of african culture as all culture seems to have been lost to humans in their subjugation. However, I think there are certainly distopic themes that are prevalent in afro-futurism. The relationship between humans and the Tlic resemble that of slavery even if it's not a one to one comparison. The stripping of culture from humans is not unlike the stripping of culture that occurred to africans as they were forced to come to America in the slave trade. The Tlic claim to be kind to humans but use them up for their own selfish purposes. This is not unlike the way white people will claim to be above racism but still benefit from a system of oppression even if they don't realize it. Of course I have to make a disclaimer as I am a white woman and am not as qualified to speak of race as a person of color and this reading of the text is just my own interpretation. I would like to try to learn more about afro-futurism in the future as I think diversity in story tellers will lead to much richer stories coming from more unique points of view.