Adulthood Rites — Octavia E. Butler

XENOGENESIS: The birth of something new--and foreign.

CHILD OF A NEW PEOPLE

The Oankali aliens have saved Earth. For a price. Oankali survival requires constant genetic exchange. .. and we are their new mating stock. The resisters reject the Oankali to live free in the wilds, a last generation of sterile humans sinking into savagery and suicide, stealing and mutilating half-alien hybrid babies to claim as their own. Akin is a hybrid, an Oankali construct infant, his body a bridge between worlds. He looks human, but can remember the womb, taste molecular structure, and kill with a toxic touch...

Kidnapped from his Oankali home, Akin is thrust into the resisters' society of desperation, violence, need--and pride. He can understand his captors only by becoming less alien. He can help the resisters only by becoming more alien. Akin can defend human beings only by becoming Oankali.

And if Akin tries to save humanity, the humans will kill him.