In the Afterword to “Bloodchild,” the titular story from this collection, Butler makes explicit that this story is not an allegory for slavery. It’s easy to see why she would feel such a caveat was necessary; after all, this is a story about non-white humans in an alien world who are coerced into breeding and working for another society. In declaring that this is not a story about slavery, Butler inverts the readers’ expectations and calls attention to the features of the story that do not align with the realities of slavery—namely, the possibility of genuine love between Gan and T’Gatoi, despite the power dynamic present in their relationship and the stories’ larger struggle between the two species.

Elements of the violence of slavery and colonialism are present throughout the other stories, as with “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” where DGD patients have been experimented on and force-sterilized. Experimentation, particularly with relation to reproduction, is also explored in “Amnesty,” a story about an invasive alien species with superior technology who kidnap human natives and subject them to painful treatments. Here, Butler invokes the tragic history of experimentation on black Americans, as well as colonized peoples like the natives of Puerto Rico or the Indigenous peoples of North America.