Time as a concept is not only related to one’s individual life but also to society that goes back many generations and in one’s community. Today we can feel how time is a spiral, how the present moment is always layered with multiple pasts and underlying alternate futures. The paradox also acknowledges the ways in which time feels layered in Afrodiasporan traditions, where the past is always layered over the present moment-our ancestors reside with and within us, even if on a different temporal plane/scale. Butler herself is set apart in time and space, our grandmother paradox:
Instead, Martha is set apart from space and time to do this work of helping humanity. Martha hopes (thinks) she must be dead or hallucinating, though she is not. The wrong kind of intervention will lead to depopulation, decreased birthrates, and a fundamental alteration of what it means to be human. God says that Martha must “Think of the needs of the future … as well as the needs of the present.”īutler’s Martha is understandably fearful, distressed, and upset by the task she is given. God asks her to consider carefully “What change would you make if you could make only one?”-one that would allow humanity to survive instead of its present trajectory to destroy itself. Butler’s story, “Book of Martha”-is tasked by a godlike figure (or someone so powerful they might as well be a god) to make a change. Martha Bes is a 43-year-old Black woman, living in Seattle, Washington. Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
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