{"id":134,"date":"2026-01-16T17:49:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/?post_type=item&#038;p=134"},"modified":"2026-01-16T17:49:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T23:49:00","slug":"imago","status":"publish","type":"item","link":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/item\/imago\/","title":{"rendered":"Imago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>Imago<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<br>Octavia E. Butler\u00a0<br>New York: Warner Books, 1989\u00a0<br>Vanderbilt University Collection\u00a0<br>Vanderbilt University Special Collections<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:22px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>Imago<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is the\u00a0third and\u00a0final book in Octavia E. Butler\u2019s Xenogenesis\u00a0series.\u00a0An alien species, the\u00a0Oankali, have rescued humanity after a nuclear war and begun a long-term genetic merging project with them.\u00a0The protagonist is the culmination of this project, a third sex unique to the\u00a0Oankali, and struggles to understand this new identity, find human companionship, and balance the tension\u00a0inherent in human-Oankali\u00a0relations.\u00a0The novel explores gender fluidity and queerness decades before these concepts were openly debated.\u00a0Butler\u2019s groundbreaking\u00a0work is\u00a0one of the earliest\u00a0literary\u00a0examples of Afrofuturism\u00a0and blends post-apocalyptic survival with themes of colonialism,\u00a0race\u00a0and biological interdependence.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":96,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"section":[4],"class_list":["post-134","item","type-item","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","section-space-exploration-alien-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/item\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/item"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/item\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/item\/134\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhibitions.library.vanderbilt.edu\/scifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}