Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

Octavia Estelle Butler Biography
Octavia E. Butler was an only child born June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father, Laurice, worked as a shoeshine man, while her mother, Octavia M. worked as a maid. Her father died when she was young; therefore Octavia was raised by her mother and grandmother. Octavia grew up in a very racially mixed neighborhood and was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. She also grew up in a strict Baptist household. At the age of 12, Octavia first got into writing science fiction after seeing the film “Devil Girl from Mars”. Though she was shy as a child, Octavia overcame her shyness and received her associate degree from Pasadena City College in 1963. She then pursued her education at California State University in Los Angeles and then at UCLA. One of Octavia’s most inspiring workshops was with Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1970, which soon followed her first novel, “Crossover”. Butler’s most popular novel was “Kindred” which was published in 1976. “Kindred” was about a black woman who goes back in time to slavery before the Civil War. In 1995 Octavia E. Butler became the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. Butler moved to Seattle, Washington in 1999. Octavia went through a writers block during after writing the first two novels in the Parable series. In 2005 she published a novel “Fledgling” which helped her to get back on track with a third and last of the Parable trilogy. Unfortunately due to her early death after falling off the stairs in her house and striking her head she was not able to finish her novel. Butler achieved many awards in her lifetime for her writings, including two Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. However, Butler was mostly known for exposing readers to the injustices of society through her metaphors in her science fiction novels. More so than what she shared through her writing, Butler was also a pioneer in a field dominated by white male writers. As a result of this, a scholarship fund was established to help writers of color to attend one of Clarion workshops, where she was inspired and got started.

Octavia E. Butler Bibliography :
In 1974, she started the novel Patternmaster, which became her first published book in 1976, though it would become the fifth in the Patternist series. Over the next eight years, she would publish four more novels in the same story line, though the publication dates of the novels do not match the internal order of the series.
• Wild Seed (1980)
• Mind of my Mind (1977)
• Clay’s Ark (1984)
• Survivor (1978)
• Patternmaster (1976)
In 1979, she published Kindred, a novel that uses the science-fiction staple of time travel to explore slavery in the United States. In this story, Dana, an African American woman, is inexplicably transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early nineteenth century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, an African American woman who was born free but forced into slavery later in life.
• Kindred (1979)
Next came Lilith’s Brood, formerly Xenogenesis, novels which are available separately or collected in one volume. They tell the story of the human survivors of an apocalyptic war as they are joined and genetically altered by extraterrestrials that have an affinity for strangers.
• Dawn (1987)
• Adulthood Rites (1988)
• Imago (1989)
And the two collected versions of all three novels:
• Xenogenesis (Hard cover, 1989)
• Lilith’s Brood (Trade Paperback, 2000)
Next came the two Parable novels. These take readers into the world of economic, environmental, and social chaos that we seem to be creating, and they offer a few solutions, both malignant and benign.
• Parable of the Sower (1993)
• Parable of the Talents (1998)
She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in the 2005 novel, Fledgling, a vampire novel with a science-fiction context. Although Butler herself passed Fledgling off as a lark, the novel is connected to her other works through its exploration of race, sexuality, and what it means to be a member of a community. Moreover, the novel continues the theme, raised explicitly in Parable of the Sower, that diversity is a biological imperative.
• Fledgling (2005)
And finally, there is a book of short fiction and essays including title story, Bloodchild, Speech Sounds, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and others.
• Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

Annotated Bibliography

Octavia E Butler 

1. Butler, Octavia E. Interview with Susan McHenry. Essence Vol. 29 Issue 10 Feb. 1999: 80.

The interview is about Octavia Butler explaining her style of work. Butler talks about how she combines science fiction with what we go through today in the Parable of the Sower. Butler also talks about how people who aren’t into science fiction like her work because instead of gaining magical powers, her characters lose something they used to have.

  2. Stillman, Peter G. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables.”Utopian Studies 14 (2003): 15-35.

This article talks about how Octavia Butler portrays possible dystopian and utopian societies in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Stillman explains that Butler shows possibilities of the future with the destruction of communities, the growth of private power, and a strong religious movement. Stillman also argues that Butler presents solutions on how human beings can act with others to change themselves or the world.  

3. Butler, Octavia E. Interview with Jackson H. Jerome. Crisis Apr. 1994: 4-6.

In this interview, Butler talks about her roll as a science fiction novelist. She also talks about how the emphasis on The Parable of the Sower is to portray events that are happening in the present like racial and gender struggles.

  4. Govan, Sandra. “The “Parable of the Sower” as Rendered by Octavia Butler: Lessons

       for Our Changing Times.” Femspec 4, no. 2 (2003): 239-258.

The article talks about the lessons that readers should learn in the Parable of the Sower. Govan talks about how Butler questions gender roles, portrays how the illiterate and uneducated will be victimized, and how saving the humanity is a choice and decision we can make.

  5. Zaki, Hoda. “Future Tense.” Women’s Review of Books. Vol. XI, Nos. 10 and 11,  July, 1994: pp. 37-8.

In this article Zaki summarizes Octavia Butler’s book Parable of the Sower and compares it to some of her other novels. Zaki thoroughly explains the significance of human survival in the communities of Robledo, Oliver, and Earthseed. Additionally, Butler’s reoccurring theme of racial differences and overcoming differences is discussed in this article.

    6. Pfeiffer, John R. “Octavia Butler Writes the Bible.” Shaw and Other Matters. 140-54. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1998: pp. 140-54

Throughout this article, Pfeiffer describes how Butler continually makes biblical references in her novels. Pfeiffer actually goes through every novel that makes references to the bible and critically analyzes the meaning behind them. Pfeiffer says that Butler is constantly challenging the bible’s weak spots and welcoming its strong points.

  7. Jablon, Madelyn. “Metafiction as Genre” Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature. University of Iowa Press, 1997: pp. 139-65.

This is an interesting article that talks about Octavia Butler’s impact on the genre of science fiction and more particularly, the impact of her novel Parable of the Sower. Jablon attempts to explain how Parable of the Sower makes divisions between the real and fictive world.

  8. Clara Escoda Agustí, Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Extrapolation 46, no. 3 (fall 2005): 351-59.

The article by Clara Escoda Agusti examines how Octavia E. Butler uses female characters to describe a male dominated world in Parable of the Sower.  Butler uses Lauren to describe how she overcomes a male dominate world.  Butler also uses other female characters to show what happens to females in a male dominated world.  Clara Escoda Agusti also states in this article that Lauren creates Acorn to counteract the world view of male domination and to make the community where male and females are equal.         

9. Patricia Melzer, “All That You Touch You Change’: Utopian Desire and the Concept of  Change in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.“ FEMSPEC 3, no. 2 (2002): 31-52.

This article by Patricia Melzer describes the similarities and difference between the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Sower.  It does this by examining the feminist notions of utopia, politics, and writing style that Octavia E Butler uses in each novel.   

  10. Jerry Phillips, “The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Novel 35, nos. 2/3 (spring 2002): 299-311.

This article by Jerry Phillips examines how Octavia E Butler uses two pathways to design a modern utopia. The two pathways describes by Phillips are application of bureaucratic rationality to socioeconomic problems through the agency of the state and second, the constitution of communities of “them” and “us” through the politics of race.  The author of the articles states that Butler tries to influence her audience’s way of thinking and doing.  The author states Butler does this by predicting and writing about current trend that will shock her readers because it is very familiar to them.  

  11. Madhu Dubey, “Folk and Urban Communities in African-American Women’s Fiction: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Studies in American Fiction 27, no. 1 (spring 1999): 103-28.

The article by Madhu Dubey examines the differences of southern folk to Parable of the Sower.  It describes how Octavia E Butler uses social and political ideas to extend the boundaries of fantasy.   

12. Diemer Llewellyn, Jana Rape in feminist utopian and dystopian fiction: Joanna Russ’s “The Female Man”, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and Octavia Bulter “The Parable of the Sower” and “The Parable of the Talents”.  Diss. Villanova University, 2006. ProQuest Digital Dissertations. ProQuest. 24 Feb. 2008    http://www.proquest.com.proxy.cc.uic.edu/

The dissertation by Jana Diemer Llewellyn discusses how rape threatens women from being independent in society.  

 13. Jones, Esther L. Traveling Discourses Subjectivity, Space and Spirituality in Black Women’s Speculative Fictions in the Americas. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State  University, 2006.

The article discusses the way in which fiction that predict the future enables implications for black liberation by embracing differences and change.  

14. Ivey, Adriane Louise Rewriting Christianity: African American women writers and the Bible.  Diss. University of Oregon, 2000. ProQuest Digital Dissertations. ProQuest. 24 Feb. 2008 <http://www.proquest.com.proxy.cc.uic.edu/>

This article describes how authors use the bible to show myths and how people of different races and gender are treated and the effect the myths have on the people

 15. Foster, Guy M. “”Do I Look Like Someone You Can Come Home to From Where  You May Be Going?”: Re-Mapping Interracial Anxiety in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.”  African American Review 41, no. 1 (2007): 143-164.

The article presents a literary criticism on Octavia Butler’s “Kindred,” a book about African-American slavery and time-travel. It talks about how the black female-white male sexual relationship was unconventionally portrayed.

  16. Braid, Christina. “Contemplating and Contesting Violence in Dystopia: Violence in  Octavia Butler’S XENOGENESIS Trilogy.” Contemporary Justice Review 9 (2006): 47-65.

This article is about the modern understanding of violence. It talks about the complexity and reality of violence in the context of Octavia Butler’s trilogy, XENOGENESIS. It also talks about how the book presents challenges to justice today by portraying dystopian societies.

  17. Butler, Octavia E. Interview with Evette Porter. Essence 36, no. 6 Oct. 2005: 96.

This interview is about Octavia Butler’s “Fledging”. She talks about how it is different from her other novels because it involves vampire romances. She also talks about how marketing people and readers label her as a science fiction novelist.

 18. J Andrew Deman. “Taking Out the Trash: Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed and the Feminist Voice in American SF. ” Femspec  1 Dec. 2005: 6-14,148. GenderWatch (GW). ProQuest. 24 Feb. 2008 <http://www.proquest.com.proxy.cc.uic.edu/>

This articles discusses how Octavia Butler uses strong female characters in each of her novels.  Also, most of her books use the theme or a variation of the theme which is the desire for independence and  autonomy.  

 19. Call, Lewis. “Structures of Desire: Erotic Power in the Speculative Fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany.” Rethinking History. 9.2/3 (2005): 275-96.

This article discusses the “erotic power” of consensual slavery in novels by Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany. In addition, Call describes how non-consensual slavery has shaped our culture and how these authors attempt to overcome the past through their literature.

  20. Steinberg, Marc. “Inverting History in Octavia Butler’s Postmodern Slave Narrative.”African American Review. 38.3 (2004): 467-76.

Steinberg talks about Butler’s novel Kindred in this article. Butler’s way of writing about the relationship between past and present is closely looked at by Steinberg.

  21. DeGraw, Sharon. “”The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same”: Gender and Sexuality in Octavia Butler’s Oeuvre.” Femspec. 4.2 (2004): 219-38.

In this article, DeGraw explains how Butler creates “heroic” female characters, however she continues to examine how these heroes in reality exemplify traditional gender roles assigned to women. Gender is looked at in the Parable series, Patternmaster series, and Xenogenesis trilogy.

  22. Sands, Peter. “Octavia Butler’s Chiastic Cannibalistics.” Utopian Studies. 14.1 (2003): 1-14.

This article looks at cannibalism’s symbolic meaning in Octavia Butler’s novels.

  23. Mitchell, Angelyn. “Not enough of the past: feminist revisions of slavery in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred.” MELUS. 26.3 (2001): 51-75.

Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is talked about this article. In particular, Mitchell examines how Butler revisits the history of slavery in the book.

   24. Raffel, Burton. “Genre to the rear, race and gender to the fore: the novels of Octavia E.         Butler.” The Literary Review (Madison, N.J.). 38 (1995): 453-61.

This article discusses how Octavia Butler’s work is beyond the genre of science fiction. Raffel talks about how Butler is captivating and insightful in her work. He believes that neither a man nor anyone other than African-American could have written what she has completed.

  25. Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.”Science Fiction Studies 25.2 (1998): 336-360.

The article focuses on post-apocalyptic hoping in relation to fiction, and relates it to Octavia Butler’s literary work. It also talks about other books about this kind of hope and the tradition of feminist utopia in Butler’s work.

 26. Scott, Jonathan. “Octavia Butler and the Base for American Socialism.” Socialism and Democracy 20.3 (2006): 105 126.

The article is about African-American socialism and the transition from the current capitalist social relations of production to equalitarianism.

 27. Yaszek, Lisa. “”A Grim Fantasy”: Remaking American History in Octavia Butler’s

      Kindred.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 28.4 (2003): 1053-1067.

The article examines the Octavia Butler’s novel “Kindred”, as a memory machine that uses science fiction devices to re-present African-American women’s history. Yaszek also admires Butler’s portrayal of future worlds where technologies mediate race and gender.