Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [921]

Every direction was dangerous, but there was more danger where there were more people. In the night, a woman and three kids might look like a gift basket of food, money, and sex. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 921

Note

The novel’s economic logic delivered in one deceptively soft metaphor — “gift basket” for a family about to be preyed upon. The gentleness of the phrase and the content of the list (“food, money, and sex”) collide, and the collision is the whole argument about what her body is worth in this world.