The intersection and conflict of gender, race and class in the Trilogy are like the story of African slaves in the United States and the conflict experienced by later African Americans when they integrate into American society. Oankali-human hybrids feel that by integrating into Oankali society, they somehow betray their human side. At the same time, due to the huge power imbalance, they have never really had other viable options. In addition to the allegory of slavery, “Lilith's brood” is more commonly written as "in the context of colonization", which has triggered a wide range of coercion and agency problems. Oankali's relationship with mankind involves a series of imperialist relations, from slavery to detention camps to eugenics. “Lilith's brood” also reveals Mattapoisett's sexism, working-class oppression, and white supremacy.

In addition to the social intersection, Oankali's mastery of genes also shows the possible intersection of the development of genetic science and biotechnology. Biological determinism is another continuous theme intersection in “Lilith's brood”. Because Oankali people first believe in the innate biological tendency of a species, roles must constantly cross exchange between their assumed biological abilities and the limits of their personal will.

The following lines from the poem sum up the incredible power that she is communicating:

“Within my eyes

the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain”

First of all, I want to discuss the event of Emmett Till’s murder. Since the time that I first learned about this event, I assumed that all modern-day people would be on the same side. I thought that this was the ONE event that we could all agree was murder. Several years ago, however, while on Facebook (which I have since completely deleted and am eternally grateful for that decision), I witnessed a conversation about brutality towards black bodies. In the conversation, a man that I went to high school with actually justified the murder of Emmett Till. I do not remember his exact words or reasoning, but I still remember the utter shock that I felt towards his words. I did not know that train of thought even existed. Furthermore, that man felt comfortable enough enough in his thinking to publicly post it.

Anyways, that was besides the point of the poem, but I thought that it pertained to the topic. The same way that the actual murder is impossible to forget, so is the thought that some people justify that murder.

Lorde’s poem had me thinking about the concept of communal trauma. Perhaps that is because society is currently going through a collective trauma with the pandemic. Although Lorde was not physically present for the murder, she is still impacted by it. She discusses what she witnessed on the television and the murmurs that she heard through the community.

Just because we were not there, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care.

Just because we didn’t know Emmett Till doesn’t mean that he was not a human deserving of life.

Just because we do not know doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t learn.

We deeply realize that the pain of poetry is primitive, that the unfair treatment of black children and women continues, and that our earth is also internally real.

The child's mother wept for the child's twisted face in the open coffin, witness the death and destruction of black life.

In "Afterimages", Lord talked about the photos of Emmett till's body she saw at the public coffin funeral.

She couldn't stop thinking about the murder:

“However the image enters

its force remains within

my eyes”

Lorde said it was to make her realize that after seeing Emmett till's picture, she would never see it. She continued to think about "the hidden fusion image under her pain."

“A white woman stands bereft and empty

a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson   

……

fused images beneath my pain.”

 

At first, she tried to escape the tragedy:

“my eyes averted

from each corner's photographies”

 

But the ghost of "the incomplete body of the black child" haunted her: "   

“his grieving mother's lamentation   

the severed lips, how many burns   

his gouged out eyes

sewed shut upon the screaming covers   

louder than life”

 

In this poem, Lorde is troubled by these images. She refers to "nightmare rain"; She came to Emmett's mother, began to feel pain, and "had the right to mourn for all black mothers who lost their children"

 

“Within my eyes

the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain

a woman wrings her hands

beneath the weight of agonies remembered

I wade through summer ghosts   

betrayed by vision

hers and my own

becoming dragonfish to survive   

the horrors we are living

with tortured lungs

adapting to breathe blood.”

 

"After images" is a juxtaposition of nature, violence, and loss. This juxtaposition clearly expresses Lorde’s upset, not only about what happened to Emmett Till, but also about the whole society. Citing another direct way of racial inequality and people's attitude, the poet expressed the strongest disgust and protest the juxtaposition of nature, violence, and loss. The main purpose of this poem is to do everything we can to ensure that these atrocities will not continue, because the destruction of one person will soon lead to the destruction of another.

Morrison wrote: “traditional, canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four‐hundred‐year‐old presence of, first, Africans and then African‐Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence – which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture …… Moreover, such knowledge assumes that the characteristics of our national literature emanate from a particular “Americanness” that is separate from and unaccountable to this presence. There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States. ”

Morrison clearly explains in this passage that the patent view of American literature is white male literature, that is "White literature," not "black literature". American literature actually takes a new white arch as its focus. Some powerful American literary critics have never read any African American text. They refuse to read black text because ignoring "black literature" does not seem to hurt them and make them have no obvious restrictions on their scope of work or influence.

The United States is a multi-ethnic young country, and American literature must be a diversified literature. African American literature is a literary body created by African American writers in the United States. It occupies a very important position in the whole history of American literature. "Black literature" explores the greater role of African Americans in American society, African American culture, racism, slavery and social equality. " The writing of "black literature" tends to combine oral forms, such as spirit, sermon, gospel music, blues or rap. Today, African American literature has become a recognized part of American literature.

Morrison believes that writers are one of the most sensitive, rational anarchy, representative and exploratory artists. Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and influenced by racist attitudes. It would be ridiculous and dishonest to place blacks on the pages and scenes of books such as some government quotas. Therefore, an almost completely buried topic will be raised again: the interdependence of power, race, race, and the consistency struggle of sex among white women.

 

 

 

 

The aliens have three genders, male, female, and the Ooloi who can change their genetics as they choose. I think it was interesting, there was a connection to Left Hand of Darkness and how race, hierarchy, sexism, gender, homophobia, and the need to reproduce was a huge portion of the story. Lilith is told that she will be a leader on the new Earth and have alien children, which she initially doesn’t want to agree to but later comes to teach the first group of humans trained to recolonize the Earth in exchange for her freedom from the animated suspension. When waking others from their animated suspension many do not believe her stories of aliens and her genetic changes make others uncomfortable and later attempt to run away. Lillith runs away with them at one point, once caught, Lillith finds out about her ‘friends’ being killed and finds out she is pregnant with a mixed human and alien child. 

 

Through close relationship she comes to greatly appreciate the alien beings called the Oankali. They even go so far as to alter her genetics to better understand the alien ways and make her stronger and heal quicker. Sexism is shown through the male genders when they defy and beat Lillith because they are threatened by the fact that she is a woman, strong and confident. A war between the humans and aliens begins and Lillith is held captive for a great deal of time having to interbreed and live in solitary until she negotiates herself into becoming a mediator between the humans and aliens. The book ends with the reader knowing something big is about to, or should, happen as she hopes to find fertile humans that can reestablish the human race without alien intervention. 

In Liz Ziemska's fantasy "The Mushroom Queen" , a humanoid mushroom changes places with a human woman, intending to take over her life and live among humans. The author condemns the victim's cruel way, throwing her into a root system and dissolving her until she becomes one with the fungi growing on her back lawn.

"One's discontent arouses another's desire." A restless wife always wants more than she has and wants to be a better person than her. Ziemska wrote: “What is wrong with her marriage anyway? Nothing that can be pointed to, no crimes, no infidelities. Some petty cruelties in times of stress……For months now she’s been fantasizing about being more than she is. What if she could step into the fast, fast world without being missed? What she wants now, more than anything, is a placeholder, someone to keep her life intact while she goes on a little reconnaissance trip.”(3) The wife realized her wish in the form of fungi. A mysterious mushroom queen became a part of the woman and stole her life. The original woman melted into a fungal community. When the mushroom queen shaped her new human life according to her wishes, the original woman "ran her mycelium in Cabbage and Hami melon fields" and sadly tried to find her way home.

Ziemska's description of the mushroom queen is very beautiful, “The Mushroom Queen was tired of living underground. She can assume any form. Her skin is nicer than human skin. Firm and white, it has no pores, only spores, because mushrooms are self-propagating, which can get lonely. So, she deposed herself and came to the woman’s house from the east, traveling west along the shore of a wide green river, over the Appalachians, beneath the Great Lakes, flowing across the midwestern plains. She was born over a century ago in the unkempt garden of a red-brick house that was once a home, then a nursery, then a nunnery, and is now again a home.

That is where our woman arrives now, sucked across the country, and extruded from the ground beneath a trellis of tangled vines that sprout purple flowers in the summer. They have switched places, our woman and the Mushroom Queen, the discontent of one calling to the desire of the other. Nature abhors a vacuum.” （5）

Mushroom queen, her double, now lives her old life as a human woman and has her own problems. She would rather eat compost than the delicious Bree her husband put on the table. She found it difficult to speak. Bathing in the water made her feel very dirty, so she rolled around in the mud and cleaned up afterwards. In the life she took over, she felt more and more decadent, because green mucus grew on the wall and the dog was no longer walked.

"The Mushroom Queen" is a terrible reversal. Biology is sometimes completely indistinguishable from terror. Nature provides us with terrible diet and greedy breeding insects, as well as many other disturbing miracles. Fungi are the most disturbing natural phenomenon. Sometimes mushrooms take over an animal's entire nervous system, eat the brain that unknowingly ingests its life form, and do anything to reproduce. Contemporary science fiction writers have put themselves on the bet and created a series of terrible works.

The gender transition between mushrooms and women is strange. Men and dogs play different roles. The husband pretended not to notice the difference between his wife and later applied the change to extramarital affairs. He did not know that the mushroom queen was working for a long time to solve his mold poisoning problem. In his passive satisfaction with no serious quarrel, he committed himself to his destruction. The smallest brown dog in the family is completely different from men for sudden changes. The dog's nose immediately noticed something wrong. Of course, the dog knew that the creature he slept with was not his beloved mistress, but he also realized that it was dangerous to know it. This "woman" copied his woman too much. Obviously, it took a lot of effort to get rid of stunts. The dog knows that nothing in the world is more dangerous than desire. He also knew that warning the fake was risking the life of his real mistress, who was obviously imprisoned somewhere. The dog knows the danger of desire - but it can't resist it.

"The Mushroom Queen" is a convulsive story of gender transformation. A woman living in the suburbs, eager for too much, exchanged with the ruler of fungi, which turned into a terrible reversal. The novel also describes how the mushroom queen tries to act like humans. When they approach, her body "surrounds" the victim's husband, breathes through her gills, and coats the bedroom wall with green mucus. It's disgusting and chilling. Ziemska uses the beauty of her genius to describe people through things and express feelings through scenery. She wonderfully tells us a science fiction story about how a human woman began to want to disappear and slowly merged with the root. Ziemska uses deformation to illuminate our female protagonists and the original places in their world. Our women escape, devour, and create life. They finally painfully discover their true self by peeling off their known skin.