Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. Olamina's daughter, Larkin, is resentful because she believes that Earthseed is more important to her mother than family was. After all, her mother had an opportunity to move with her husband and child to an isolated coastal town and start a new life that could possibly have been safer. In a review that appeared in the magazine Time Out New York, Daphne Uviller wrote, Despite the bleakness of the novel's proposed future, the novel projects subtle equalities not yet enjoyed by pre-apocalyptic readers. Not once does anyone question Olamina's ability to lead Acorn and Earthseed on the grounds that she is a woman.
People care for one another's children across racial lines.
And both sexual preference and gender identity are portrayed as mutable and indeterminate. A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature. A parable that deserves to be pondered. Most touching in the novel are the friction between generations, the kinds of faith each generation indulges in, and the new families that form when traditional ones are splintered. Octavia Estelle Butler does for people of color.