Understanding Octavia Butler -- ep. by Ebony Lumumba

A short take on speculative fiction writer, Octavia Butler.
 
Written by Ebony Lumumba.
Read by Kassandra Timm.

Transcript

I am, she says, “a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”  

This is the way speculative author Octavia Butler described herself. In her novels and short stories, she created out-of-this-world scenarios and characters who challenged the status quo as much as Butler’s identity as a Black woman writing science fiction challenged the makeup of the literary marketplace.  

You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions—a podcast about popular and critical responses to African American novels and more. 

Born the daughter of a widowed, single mother who earned a living as a domestic worker and contended with the persistent racial violence of the mid-twentieth century, Octavia Butler acknowledged her lack of access to social power within her existential reality.  

She began writing about other worlds and liberation for Black people and other marginalized populations at a young age—noting “I began writing about power because I had so little.”  Writing allowed Butler to work through her own challenges of severe shyness, dyslexia, and being the target of schoolyard bullies who poked fun at her height and social awkwardness.  

Butler published her first stories in the early 1970s and went on to write her Patternist Series and Kindred during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Having been awarded every major science fiction writing award over the course of her career, Butler is our undisputed mother of the galaxy of science fiction writing. She even has a mountain on the moon of Pluto named in her honor.  

Despite her untimely death in 2006, Butler is the future.  Her impact persists in the proliferation of new media based on her work.  In 2015, Parable of the Sower was adapted into an opera of the same name and, in 2021, the novel was optioned for film adaptation.  

Damien Duffy and John Jennings adapted Parable of the Sower and Kindred into graphic novels. Dawn and Wild Seed are currently being adapted for television and film, respectively, and FX produced an eight-episode miniseries based on Kindred in 2022. 

Butler inaugurated a galaxy of possibilities for other Black women and writers who are writing the future.  She is our other worldly guide.

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This episode of Remarkable Receptions was written by Ebony Lumumba and edited by Elizabeth Cali and Howard Rambsy. 

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This podcast, Remarkable Receptions, is part of the Black Literature Network, a joint project from African American literary studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas. The project was made possible by the generous support of the Mellon Foundation.  For more information, visit blacklitnetwork.org.