June 22th, 1947. California was watching the birth of Octavia Estelle Butler. The city of Pasadena, known by old traditions, wasn’t expecting to receive a name that would stay marked in history. If you haven’t read anything from her, this post is for you to connect with this writer and dive deeper into the science fiction world.
From the handcuffs of segregation to the freedom gIVEN by a writing machine
The doors of writing were opened for her while she was opening garbage bags and looking for books and magazines. She lived during the highest time of segregation in the USA, seeing her mother, a housemaid, and dad, a shoeshine, suffer uncountable racist attacks. She started putting her ideas on paper when she was 12 years old in order to escape reality through fantasy and tell better stories than the ones she was surrounded by. And the kickoff to that came after watching Devil Girl from Mars, directed by David MacDonald, when she decided to challenge this production: “I can write a better story than that. Anyone can.”
Pioneer of the Afrofuturism movement, she was able to change the history of traditional sci-fi by mixing it with profound cultural, social and racial problems, putting it in the spotlight. “I started writing about power because it was something I had very little of”, it’s how she begins Kindred, a novel published in 1979, and reflects one of her goals in life. She wanted to be the first black woman author and decided to turn her amateur texts into a profession when she achieved her first writing machine.Â
“Make people feel, feel, feel”
Texts written in the first person that built a kinship with readers and narratives around humanity, relationships, feelings and power dynamics are some of Butler’s traits. Since her first book, Patternmaster, she wanted people to touch, taste and know the world by her words and the science fiction soft genre gave room to it, so she could build her road. “The freedom it allows is so great. There was no subject I couldn’t discuss, there was nothing I couldn’t analyze”, she said to the Museum of Pop Culture in 2003.
However, she did not just make her country broaden its horizons, but the whole of America, especially when arrived in the southern part of the continent by the translation to Portuguese of Kindred. The story of Dana, a black woman from Maryland, who starts to have terrifying time travels related to slavery narratives, where she needs to survive won the hearts and souls of Brazilians.Â
The inspiration for this masterpiece came from the experiences of racism she witnessed when accompanying her mother in her job. Rich houses with great front doors and her mother having to enter through the back ones used to cause fear and pain in the little girl which inspired her to show more people this reality.
THE MOST FAMOUS BOOKS
In the end, she wrote more than 20 books and took part in four movies, some of which you can read about here:
Wild Seed (1980):
Doro and Anyanwu. Two immortals. Two fearless. Until they met each other.
Doro has always searched for perfection in people, so he could steal it from them and keep living. Anyanwu, on the other hand, heals injuries and helps others with her wisdom. None of them are afraid of anything. Until they met each other.
Their encounter gives room to an epic love and hate story, struggling power through centuries, things they had never experienced before. Until they met each other.
In the end, they will change the world. But for the better or the worse?
Bloodchild (1984):
The dilemma of self-love and sacrificing yourself for someone you grew up and still live with is what this masterpiece leads everyone to think over through Terrans’ life experience. As a group that left Earth looking for a life without persecution and found an alien race, with whom they started living alongside, the Tlic.Â
Nevertheless, the Tlic are facing extinction and will need Terrans to survive. To do so, the former larvae must be planted in the latter bodies, but this can mean a threat to them and Gan, a young boy chosen to be one of the guinea pigs, has to face this duality.
Dawn (1987):Â
Have you ever thought of sleeping and waking up on a whole new Earth? Are people living longer, incurable diseases being cured and without environmental problems?Â
I bet you did so, already. And that’s exactly what Lilith Iyapo experienced in Dawn after being put in a centuries-long sleep after an alien race saved her and some people from a nuclear war.Â
However, in the same way, you dreamed with this reality, I know you bear in mind that everything has a price, right? And that’s exactly this cost that Lilith will meet in this narrative, leading the readers to mixed feelings: deep reflections, exploration into gender and race, as well as being provoked.
Parable of the Talents (1998):
Alienation, violence, slavery and separation allied to transcendence, spirituality, freedom and community are the topics Octavia Butler accomplished in this story that happened in 2032.Â
As a continuation of Parable of the Sower, voiced by Lauren Olamina, Parable of the Talents brings to light her daughter, from whom she has been separated for most of the girl’s life. Surrounded by a “war-torn continent” and a “far-right religious crusader in the office of the U.S presidency”, the writer built the narrative line of thought through Lauren’s journal.Â
By doing so, she explores human emotional and physical needs between a society’s destruction.
Still intriguing and atemporal, even published three decades ago
- The first black woman to combine race, gender and science fiction;
- Developing strong and remarkable black main characters;
- Thought-provoking plots;
- And deep human relations.
These are some achievements Octavia Butler’s curriculum carries and will keep doing so, even with the passage of time.
Society doesn’t change drastically. Racism, gender differences, and social inequalities still are noticeable parts of the world. Movements are done, organizations are created, and public politics are enacted, but the process is long and slow.
Because of that, what Butler wants us to pay attention to is still alive and her unique writing style, incomparable critical sense and metaphoric language (which make people see reality further and relate things) will keep putting it in the spotlight to inspire many more generations.
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The article above was edited by Giulia El Houssami.
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