Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science-fiction writer born in Pasadena, California, in 1947. Her father died when Butler was a child and she was solely brought up by her mother. Being an isolated and shy kid, Octavia began to sit alone read in the central library. She also started writing science fiction in her teenage.
During the time of the Black Power Movement, Octavia got the chance to study in a community school and later participated in a local workshop for writers. After some time, she was motivated to take part in a science fiction event, the Clarion Workshop.
Soon after she developed an interest in writing, Octavia produced and published her first works. By 1970, she had already achieved the status of an accomplished writer and decided to become a full-time professional writer. Within a limited time, her stories attracted huge readership and critical appreciation.
Moreover, Octavia began to organize workshops for writing skills and moved to Washington State. At the age of 58, she died of a stroke. The collection of her works is present in the Huntington Library research collection.
She received several awards for her short stories and books e.g. the Nebula and the Hugo awards. Furthermore, her great fame lies in winning the MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 as the first science fiction writer to get it. In most of her works, Octavia challenges the stereotypes set for genders in society.
Octavia E. Butler Biography
On 22nd June 1947, Octavia Estelle Butler was born to a housemaid, Octavia Margaret Guy, and a shoeshine man, Laurice James Butler. When she was 7 years of age, Octavia’s father died. Her mother and grandmother raised her in a staunch Baptist environment.
In Pasadena, California, Octavia grew up in a racially segregated community. Being racially black, she experienced ethnic and cultural differences and diversity in her community. In childhood, she would help her mother in cleaning houses for white people where they were treated harshly. They would enter from the back doors and run chores for them.
Being a Negro as well as a shy and isolated child, it became difficult for Octavia to socially engage with other students. Also, the reading disorder, Dyslexia made her schoolwork a torment and she would often become a point for bullying by other students. Therefore, she spent most of her time in Pasadena Central Library reading fairy tales. Later she developed an interest in sci-fi magazines and would read stories of Zenna Henderson, Theodore Sturgeon, and John Brunner.
In 1965, after completing elementary education at John Muir High School, Octavia joined Pasadena City College. She would work in the morning and attend college in the evening. Even in the college in a short-story competition, she participated and won $15 as her first writing income. In 1968, Octavia graduated from college with a degree in arts and knowledge of history.
Early Writing Career
After graduation, Octavia worked in different temporary jobs because she wanted to give more time to her writing and was steadily gaining success. Then she got admission to California State University, Los Angeles. However, she later shifted to taking writing programs.
During a minority writers’ workshop, she met and inspired the science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison. Furthermore, he encouraged Octavia to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. She also sold her stories “Childfinger” and “Crossover” to Ellison and Robin Scott Wilson (director of Clarion) for their anthologies.
Formal Writing:
Octavia worked on the series of novels for the next five years that was later termed as the Patternist series. These novels were “Patternmaster” in 1976, in 1977 “Mind of My Mind”, and “Survivor” in 1978. In 1978, Octavia finally left doing odd jobs because her writings were able to earn for her survival.
At this time, she experimented with something different from the Patternist style and wrote “Kindred” in 1979. However, she had to end the series and wrote two more Patternist works; “Wild Seed” in 1980 and the last novel “Clay’s Art” in 1984.
Speech Sounds
Octavia received wide recognition when her “Speech Sounds” was awarded Hugo Award for the best short story in 1984. It is a science fiction story that was published by the Asimov Science Fiction magazine in 1983. The story was based on the post-Los Angeles pandemic that caused lots of people to lose their capacity to speak, write, or read.
One year after the first prize, another science fiction “Bloodchild” was prized with Hugo award, the Best Novelette Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award, and Locus Award.
Xenogenesis Trilogy
During this time, Octavia visited Agnes Mountains and the Amazon forest to gather some information about that part of the world. This research helped her in the construction of the Xenogenesis trilogy. This trilogy includes “Dawn” in 1987, “Adulthood Rites” in 1988, and the last story “Imago” in 1989. This collection of science fiction stories was published in 2000 under the title Lilith Brood.
Parables
In the last decade of her life, Octavia worked on some novels that fixed her position as the best writer. These are “Parable of the Sower” that she wrote in 1993 and “Parable of the Talents” in 1998. In 1995, she was honored with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship as the first science fiction writer to get this award. She was also given $295,000 with the award.
Award and Incomplete Series
In 1999, Octavia’s mother left the world and she got shifted to Washington’s Lake Forest Park. In this era, she also won the Nebula award for Parable of the Talents and she was determined to write four more science fiction works in the series. However, she couldn’t even begin the first work “Parable of the Trickster” because according to her, it depressed her a lot. Therefore, she wanted to go for something lightweight and refreshing.
Death
In 2005, she produced the last work “Fledgling” which is a science fiction novel of vampires. As Octavia was suffering from high blood pressure issues and was taking medications, she couldn’t produce new work and was experiencing writer’s block and severe stress. On 24th February 2006, Octavia died outside her home in Washington presumably because of a fatal stroke.
Style of Works
Butler composes her works from the perspective of an African protagonist and draws diverse groups of characters to give the concept of diversity and acceptance. Mostly she writes for the woman gender as she had suffered this marginalization of women and especially of black women in social life.
Furthermore, her works are composed in the science-fiction genre and experience limitless temporal boundaries. Her use of sci-fi as her major genre is particularly to break the limitations of other genres of literature and the fixed hierarchical system.
“Writing me in”
As she began reading and writing sci-fi literature at a very tender age, she realized the gaps in it. There was very little place for female characters and an immense portrayal of the ethnic and class systems. Therefore, Butler determined to go beyond these restrictions and concepts and write about the female characters and African females to fill the gaps in previous studies. She termed this concept by the phrase ‘writing me in’.
Therefore, Butler writes most of her works from the perspective of a marginalized black woman with no value in society. Subsequently, her difference from the higher hierarchical classes helps her rise above those and plays a vital role in configuring her potentials according to the future of society.
In her short stories, “Amnesty” and “The Book of Martha” published in 2003, Butler depicts the impossible conditions that compel a common woman to make extraordinarily alarming choices. For example, in “Amnesty”, an alien disenfranchised female is rescued by humans from unwitting abuse by aliens. Consequently, she becomes a translator for aliens because the Earth is in an economically drowning state.
Likewise, in “The Book of Martha”, the African novelist gives up on what she loves the most, writing fiction. It is because God asks her to bring some crucial change that will mend humanity’s destructive values.
Historical Influence
The writing style of Butler is drastically affected by her experiences and historical context. In the novel “Kindred”, one can observe the influence of historical background on Butler’s life. This influence makes her style unique as it diffuses fantasy, slave narrative, science-fiction, culture, exaggerated situations, folklores, and weird species.
As she lost her father at a young age, this influence of a father figure as disconnected from family life can be seen in her works like Mind of My Mind where the father ‘Doro’ is a mysterious character.
Likewise, her mother’s slave life can be seen in Butler’s many works where female figures are African slaves who compromise with the changing circumstances of the time.
Genre
Octavia wrote her works in Science-fiction and fantasy because it is a very flexible genre in terms of violations. Through fantasy and sci-fi, she happily exploits the innate human values of racism, manipulation by white people, sufferings, female submission, and hierarchical difference.
These issues that are otherwise restricted in other genres of literature are prolifically highlighted by Butler in the science-fiction genre.
Octavia E. Butler’s Writing Style
The two most important tenets of Butler’s writing are the portrayal of supernatural black African women who intelligently surpass the limits of time and space and secondly, the use of the black diverse storyline opposing the principles of realism.
For instance, Butler makes her protagonists African-slave women and portrays them in a way crucial for social life. Through science-fiction, she gives a better place to these women who are otherwise neglected, kept disconnected, isolated from social life. In most of her novels like “Kindred”, and stories “Amnesty” and “The Book of Martha”, etc, we can see the ignored and exploited women’s life.
These issues that are otherwise restricted in other genres of literature are prolifically highlighted by Butler in the science-fiction genre.
Movement Freely Through Time
One of the significant features of Butler’s work is surpassing temporal and spatial limits. For example, in “Kindred” Dana moves back and forth through time in perplexity and the readers are given the impression of her confused state. For instance, sometimes she moves to the 1800s and her vocabulary becomes that of the old Southern English.
Another novel, “Parable of the Sower” is set in the near future in Los Angeles. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina lives in a nightmare and gets disconnected from her family and is exposed to the outer world for survival. There she meets some companions and in their journey to survive, she frequently tries to install hope and optimism in her friends.
Moreover, the continuation novel “Parable of the Talents” also set in future Los Angeles, tells the story of Lauren’s daughter detached from her as a small child. Also, some other works of Butler show time and space freedom as it is flexible in science fiction.
Themes:
Mixed Communities:
As Octavia was an African and lived as a minority in the American state, her works feature intermingled communities. These are constructed by African protagonists and inhabited by people having diverse mental and physical levels.
Octavia combines in her works different ethnicities in the form of making a social setup by integrating members of Europe, Asia, Africa, even cross-species, extraterrestrial species, and vampires.
For example, in “Bloodchild”, Butler presents an extraterrestrial community of ant-like creatures and their bond with humans as ‘N’Tlic. In “Fledgling”, vampires are the acting creatures.
Likewise, in the Xenogenesis Trilogy, cross-species of humans are shown e.g. Akin.
This hybridity in a communal setting gives freedom to gender and sexual roles. For example, this flexibility can be seen in polyamorous families in the work “Fledgling”.
In a way, Octavia gives freedom to making bonds between groups that are perceived as unrelated and difficult to sustain.
Breaking Stereotypes
In certain works of Octavia, the father figure is shown as a wanderer and careless man and is not in close connection with family. One of the reasons for this representation is perhaps the early death of Octavia’s father.
For example, in the science fiction story “Mind of My Mind”, Doro is such a mysterious 4000-year old immortal man and the father of Mary. Also in the Xenogenesis trilogy, the males are alien-human cross.
Moreover, Octavia develops submissive characters that are only kept for breeding purposes or other minor works in the stories as overpowering the powerful ones. It also depicts her lowly Negro origin and her rising popularity.
Value of Survival
Butler’s protagonists are mostly minority characters in a diverse community; therefore, their background makes them aware of the brutalities of life. Hence, they compromise with the difficulties of life for survival.
The main characters are the deprived people who suffer, tolerate, and compromise to survive the radical changes in society.
Also, these figures go through mental and physical difficulties to endure hardships and become strong-willed. In most of the cases, they achieve a state of understanding or love while facing those in power with courage.
In this way, they acquire a critical point of compromise with the authorities.
To clarify, Octavia’s representation of such submissive and deprived characters in her works depict her childhood life and her mother’s submission to the white people as well as the historical exploitation of minorities.
She imparts the idea of how these subjugated people bring productive changes to society when they are allowed freedom like others.
Hierarchical Thinking
Octavia explained her thoughts on the innate hierarchical thinking and racism by various sects of society. In different interviews and essays, she expresses the flawed human thinking on racism in the essay “A World without Racism”.
According to Butler, the hierarchical organization of classes becomes the root of all the isms like racism, classism, ethnocentrism, etc.
Octavia diverts this hierarchical setup and the authority of the powerful over the weak by overpowering her submissive protagonists over the powerful. In her stories, the weak dominate the authority.
For instance, the aliens in Xenogenesis trilogy, vampires in “Fledgling”, superhuman, masters, and other figures of power are opposed by the disenfranchised protagonist that represents change and diversity.
In “Parable of the Sower”, Butler cries out that “Embrace diversity/ Or be destroyed”.
African-American Future Contexts
Octavia Butler’s works deal with the genre of Afrofuturism. In her literary works, Octavia plays with certain themes regarding the lives and future concerns of the black people keeping in mind the context of 20th-century social life.
As discussed earlier, the protagonists of Butler’s stories belong to diverse groups of human life and even some of them are non-humans at all.
Therefore, the discussion of different natural and supernatural species like aliens, vampires, cross-humans, and extraterrestrial species makes her works diverse in points of view.
Her concentration on hybrid values exceeds both black and white inferiority and domination.
Breeding and Sociobiological Changes
In Butler’s literary pieces, she deals with changing life forms and modes of existence not only in the possible hierarchical species but also gives the idea of improbably diverse species coexisting and cooperating e.g. Xenogenesis trilogy.
Adams John describes this idea of Butler that she tries to act against the drive of death by expressing love for life in different biological forms.
To overpower the hierarchical manipulation, there is interbreeding, cloning, alien-human contact, rape, contamination, symbiosis, and other kinds of manipulation in the biological system.
Some critics believe that this change and distortion of the human body by Butler is necessary for the deconstruction of a world formed by hierarchical violence.
In the Xenogenesis trilogy, the breed developed at the end is the one with more tolerance, acceptance, compromise, and the strength to use power productively.
In this way, Butler tries to impart the idea that we need people to develop advanced skills and a more tolerance level and personal skills of survival to accept the diverse changes in the changing environment.
