Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [53]

Thanks to Paracetco, the small pill, the Einstein powder, the particular drug my mother chose to abuse before my birth killed her, I’m crazy. I get a lot of grief that doesn’t belong to me, and that isn’t real. But it hurts. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 53

Note

The catalog of names for the drug — clinical, slangy, then “the particular drug my mother chose” — moves from label to choice to blame in three appositives, and the final three-word sentence refuses every attempt to explain the pain away. “But it hurts” is the whole book’s thesis in miniature: the delusion is unreal, the pain is not.