De-Essentializing Interracial Representations: Black and White Border-Crossings in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" and Octavia Butler's "Kindred"

Abstract

As a writer of science fiction I was free to imagine new ways of thinking about people and power, free to maneuver my characters into situations that don't exist. . .. I've been told again and again that my characters aren't nice. I don't doubt it. People who must violate their long-held beliefs are rarely pleasant. I don't write about heroes; I write about people who survive and sometimes prevail. -Octavia Butler qtd. in Mixon, Futurist Woman