“No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.”
Octavia E. Butler was a science fiction author who revolutionized the genre with her ability to discuss African American spiritualism and issues of class, racism, misogyny, and inequality in general within her works. Originally from Pasadena, California, Butler was born in 1947. Her father unfortunately died when she was very young, leaving her mother to fully raise and support Butler, which she did. She had a heavy interest in writing from early on in her life, but when she was a child she discovered that she had dyslexia, however, that didn’t stop her from creating her own fictional stories and turning them into written works whenever she wanted.
By the age of 10 Butler knew she wanted to become a writer and she always pursued it. She earned an associate degree from Pasadena City College and later went on to join the Clarion Fiction Writers Workshop, which allowed her to work with Harlan Ellison; a very well-established science fiction writer, he eventually would go on to write for The Twilight Zone.
Butler lived a busy life at this point. She was working multiple service industry jobs to make ends meet and pay for her education. She would work several hours during the mornings every day, and by the late afternoon she could go to her workshop and work on her craft. It was this dedication that drove Butler to success.
It was also this dedication that showed Butler how much harder women of color had to work to reach the same level of success as their white male counterparts. Butler learned very early on that science fiction was a white man’s club with very little room for African American voices, let alone a woman’s voice. However, she never let that deter her from sharing her talent with the world. Butler’s mother worked as a maid to support her, she used the constant scrutiny and mistreatment that her mother endured to give Butler a good life as inspiration to publicize these stories and injustices that black women face everyday.
“I didn’t like seeing her go through back doors. If my mother hadn’t put up with all those humiliations, I wouldn’t have eaten very well or lived very comfortably. So I wanted to write novels that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure,” Butler once said, according to The New York Times.
Butler always had an innate ability to take the real life struggles that black women face everyday – racism, misogyny, classism – and weave them within works of science fiction to reach a broader audience.
In 1976, Butler published her first novel titled Patternmaster, at the time of publication Butler didn’t know that this would later become the first book of many that followed a group of people with telepathic powers that she called Patternists. Other works in the Patternist series included Mind of My Mind (1977), Wild Seed (1980) and Clay’s Ark (1984). However, it wouldn’t be until 1979 when Butler would reach her big break with the novel Kindred, which she claimed to be partly inspired by her ancestors and mother as well.
The story in Kindred follows an African-American woman who travels back in time to save a white slave owner’s life, who ends up being her ancestor as well. The novel wraps in themes of interracial relationships and the complexities of them rooting back all the way to slavery. This was a common technique that Butler became famous for. While most works of science-fiction deliver a clear-cut mythical fantasy, Butler used those elements to address issues facing humanity in general, but also African-Americans more specifically. It wasn’t long after Kindred’s publication that Butler began receiving critical acclaim for her works and the societal impacts they carried.
In 1984, Butler won the Best Short Story Hugo Award for her story “Speech Sounds.” One of her other most famous works/novelette was “Bloodchild,” which would go on to also win a Hugo award and a Nebula Award as well; the Nebula Awards are given out to the best works of science fiction literature every year.
“Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psycho-analyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.”
In the late 1980’s, Butler would go on to write her Xenogenesis trilogy which would later become just as popular as Kindred. The trilogy included her books Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989). The books told the story of humans and aliens coexisting in the name of reproduction and repopulation. In order to ensure their mutual survival, humans and aliens would reproduce with one another. The aliens were known as the Oankali, and the series used them as a prop to explore issues of genetics and race in the real world.
After the Xenogenesis trilogy, Butler would go on to write the two-installment Parable series—Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). However, in between both of those novels – 1995 – Butler received the genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The grant allowed Butler to buy a house for her and her mother. When Butler received this grant, she was also making history, not only was she the first African American science fiction writer to receive the grant, she was the first science fiction author in general to receive this grant, which normally went to more “mainstreamed” genres of writing.
After the Parable Series, Butler found herself in one of the worst spells of writer’s block she’s ever faced. In 1999, she moved to Seattle, Washington in hopes that a change in scenery and culture would work to motivate her next novel idea. However, Butler was also suffering from high-blood pressure at the time, and the medication she took for it caused her to go into deep spells of depression. She did continue writing, and even taught at Clarion’s Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop regularly. In 2005 she published her final novel, Fledgling, she was also inducted into Chicago State university’s International Black Writers Hall of Fame the same year.
In 2006, Butler died due to a stroke outside of her home, but she will forever be remembered for her legacy in science fiction, and the way she paved the way for black women writers everywhere. Gregory Hampton, an established writing critic, said it best when it came to Butler’s impact; “she was a writer of stories that blurred the lines of distinction between reality and fantasy, and through her work, she revealed universal truths.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
