A Groundbreaking Writer

“Why do I write? Because I can’t expect anyone else to tell my stories.”
― Octavia E. Butler

This day, June 22nd, 2018, is Octavia E. Butler’s 71st birthday. She is a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy and many sci-fi writers, including myself, see her as the mother of Black science fiction or Afrofuturism. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship aka the ‘Genius Grant’. She’s also won the Hugo and Nebula awards, which are huge awards in sci-fi literature. Although the incredible writer passed away in February 2006, Butler continues to live on through her word. Her fiction often focuses on Black female characters, displaying their heroic strength and vulnerability, and she is a champion of diversity and inclusivity.

“I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was science fiction.”― Octavia E. Butler

Her work is truly groundbreaking, forever changing a white male-dominated genre. I think in our current time of injustice and seemingly repeating patterns of history, her books are like a lighthouse in the heavy fog. Butler saw the potential of sci-fi as a place to discuss hierarchies, racism, xenophobia, gender issues, and so much more.

“The one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is to give up hope.”
― Octavia E. Butler

The Writing Journey & Inspiration

Butler is widely known for her work, Kindred, in which a modern Black woman time travels to the Antebellum South to make sure her ancestor is born. Yet, many of her other stories take on aspects of hard sci-fi and fantasy, exploring alien cultures, shape-shifters (Dawn, Wild Seed, etc.) all while speaking to the reality of issues faced in our daily lives and cultural history.

I began reading Octavia Butler in middle school. At that time, the vampire craze was in it’s prime and I found her novel Fledgling in my school’s library. Reading about a vampire that was Black and a girl, opened new doors for me. Reading her work taught me that there is power in sharing one’s perspective. It was around that time, falling in love with her literature, that I knew I wanted to write science fiction and fantasy.

Last summer, I was able to see an Octavia Butler exhibit at The Huntington Library in Pasadena. Just days before the exhibit of her work would return to the Huntington Library archive, I saw her notebooks filled with affirmations about her writing dreams, her published work in multiple magazines. I saw the inner workings of a mind that created so many of my favorite stories and inspired me as a Black female to claim myself as a writer.

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
― Octavia E. Butler

As I stood taking pictures of that small treasure of an exhibit, I felt so grounded. I saw how writing isn’t an instantaneous process; it’s pages filled with color-coded words about a character’s personality, it’s drafts upon drafts, it’s drawings and doodles, it’s accolades and failure. When I came to the last section of the exhibit focused on her Xenogenesis book series (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago), there was a picture of her at the trunk of a tree that had to be three times the width of her body and large green leaves sprung up around her. She went to the Amazon to study the foliage and insects there, to grasp a type of setting for the alien world encompassed in her book series. She went there to anchor a sense of reality in her science fiction and it shines through every page.

Now, I am 20-something, and Octavia Butler is still a writer near and dear to my heart. I carry her declaration for writing with me every day. Seeing that exhibit, I measured my own writing journey with the breadcrumbs of hers. I felt a pathway extending under my feet. Her journey wasn’t a simple path, it was constantly meandering. I see Butler as a constant inspiration to writers to just keep writing and telling your stories, because no one can do it quite like you. 

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

Make today a day of literacy, read and celebrate Ms. Butler’s spectacular fiction!

Best,

Kai 😀