Week 12: Feminism and Grubs

I really enjoyed reading Bloodchild this week. I admit there are a few issues I had with it when I began to read it but as I continued I enjoyed it more and more. Sometimes its hard for me to enjoy stories where you are thrust so suddenly into the plot and there is really no explanation because as an artist I find a lot of enjoyment out of fully visualizing the character and the setting, it makes my reading experience that much more enjoyable when stories allow me to do that. But I can see the appeal with leaving out so many explanations for the reader especially when dealing with a short story like this. You want the reader to fill in the blanks and use their own imagination to the fullest. I also saw this when I read “I Live With You” as well this week. There was no explanation to what this other woman was or how she was able to live in the main characters house so easily, but I liked it because I got to speculate about all of those details.

My favorite aspect of Bloodchild was the role reversal of reproduction and how the main character reacted to witnessing it, knowing that he would have to go through the same thing. I really liked the parallels between this fictional form of reproduction versus what actual childbirth is like for women, because in all reality they are almost exactly the same, minus the fact that tiny insect like creature are growing inside instead of a human baby.  The fact that males are used to carry the alien’s offspring is a great examination of how women have been treated in the past and in some instances in the present. Women were basically deprived of their humanity and reduced to a function just as Gan and the other men in the story were.

So it’s these feminist themes that I really enjoyed in the story, and I really wish there was more of it to read because I feel like many of these theme are an untapped potential for literature and media. Hopefully stories like Bloodchild might inspire others to create their own feminist/alien reproduction reversal stories in the future.