Blood Child by Octavia Butler

 

This anthology by Octavia Butler contains both stories and essays about how her childhood and how she realized her childhood dreams to become an author.  When she was little, there were almost no black science fiction authors and none of those were women as far as she knew.  But she persevered through years of rejections and dead end jobs.  She wrote every day and eventually she was published and became an icon in the sci fi world.

Many of these stories talk about relations between humans and aliens who have come to Earth.  In the title story, Bloodchild, some humans were able to live in luxury.  However the price for that was high and hideous.  In Amnesty, the aliens have already conquered Earth.  They are now at the point where they hire some humans to work for them and the narrator is hired as a translator between the two.  

Octavia Butler is an American author.  She has won the Nebula, the Hugo and the Locust awards as well as receiving a MacArthur Genius Grant.  This anthology was a New York Times Notable Book.  I've never been a fan of her Exogenesis Trilogy but these stories are excellent and thought provoking.  This book is recommended for anthology and science fiction readers.