"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler

"Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people. She oversaw the joining of families, putting an end to the final remnants of the earlier system of breaking up Terran families to suit impatient Tlic"

By portraying a future society in which humans, the Terrans, live together with Tlics, a distinct species of aliens, on a foreign planet, Octavia Butler calls attention to past and contemporary issues of race and slavery; she uses "science fiction as a mirror for contemporary issues."

The culture that the Terrans and the Tlics create together on a foreign planet mirrors various examples of mixed cultures in reality. Though the Tlics haven't exactly conquered the human civilization (on the other hand, it was originally the Terrans who fled from their original civilization to settle on a different planet), in a way, the Terrans serve as their resources for living in terms of continuing on with their race. With two different races coming together, as in the combination of Terrans and Tlics trying to create a joint society, many conflicts arise in terms of who receives more benefits.

Though it is said that the Terrans are "independent people," the readers can still view elements of slavery as the Tlics use Terrans and take advantage of them as instruments in propagating their own race. Therefore, since it is in their interest to use the Terrans, the Tlics save the Terrans and allow them to live on a reserved territory. Though the Terrans do receive some benefit in following the Tlics' ways, such as the prolonging of their lives by drinking the Tlics' eggs, the balance of benefit seems to be much more tilted towards the Tlics than the Terrans. In a way, the situation reminds the readers of various examples from world history in which a similar situation occurred. For example, when Europeans enslaved Native Americans and forced them to live in a reserved territory, they did see them as an independent race, but a race that was lowly then their own. Therefore, they felt free to exploit their resources and the Tlics, too, seem to see the Terrans in a similar way; though the Tlics recognize the Terrans as their own beings, they still seem to be "caged" within the borders of the reservoir that the Tlics have set up for them.