Wild Seed

I am reading this as part of the black tiktok curriculum project. By chronology this is the first book in the patternist series, yet it was written last. Go figure. Anyway there are five books in the series which, I assume, form a narrative arc.
Big Picture this is a story of a group of black characters over a period of at least three centuries who, through eugenic breeding, manage to (“husband”) develop individuals with superhuman (psychic) capabilities.

This is the story of the relationship between Anyanwu, our protagonist, and Doro who becomes her husband and in some degree her master. At the start of the story Anyanwu could best be described as a demi-god, 300 years old ancestress and healer/protector of several African villages living a solitary existence in a hut. Anyanwu can not only heal but also change form into other humans and animals. She is existing as a wizzened grandmother witch figure when Doro shows up. Doro is in the form of a man but it soon becomes clear that he/it is really a sort of vampire who must feed at intervals by taking over other humans (and then he feeds he discards his current, now dead, host body.) Doro explains that he is much older (maybe 6000 years?) than Anyanwu and that he wants to marry her and take her to America. Doro is collecting other (possible) superhumans with the cooperation of slavers and as a pretend slaver he brings Anyanwu and a boatload of his collected individuals across the Atlantic to a town he controls in upstate New York. Doro is not only collecting humans he is breeding them eugenically with a nebulous goal of creating more powerful individuals who he can perhaps consider as peers. Anyanwu is special to Doro as she is more powerful than any of his collected, cultivated and bred “descendants”, Anyanwu is the titular “Wild Seed”. The rest of novel centers around the struggle between healer Anyanwu and breeder Doro, who at any time could decide that Anyanwu has served her purpose and can be absorbed, replaced by Doro. This novel, to me, is very “seventies” as it centers on psychic/spiritual abilities and yet makes no attempt to explain how or why they exist.