“All organizing is science fiction.” But Butler is no longer here to see her legacy grow. “Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction,” activist and author Walidah Imarisha wrote in her introduction to the book Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction From Social Justice Movements, which she co-edited with Adrienne Maree Brown. And activist Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds draws directly from Butler’s philosophies. A graphic novel adaptation of Butler’s time-travel tale Kindred, created by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings, won a Bram Stoker Award last year. Singers Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock composed an entire opera based on Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Her fans include everyone from singer and actress Janelle Monaé to African futurists Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu, who are cowriting Amazon Prime Video’s Wild Seed series with Viola Davis co-producing. She was oppressively shy, but her voice as a writer rang loud. Raised in poverty by a single mother in a society waiting to ignore her, Butler created herself and her wide legacy in a true-life act of science fiction. Butler, who became the first science fiction writer of any race or gender to win a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship “genius” Award in 1995, had a mighty high mountain to scale. Often, Afrofuturism travels across time to evoke the past, present and future in one snapshot, like Julie Dash’s brilliant film Daughters of the Dust. Afrofuturism is the audacity to imagine a thriving future for Black people, or any future.Īfrofuturism is the audacity to imagine a thriving future for Black people, or any future. Afrofuturism is space travel, superheroes, sorcerers and seers. Afrofuturism-which spans literature, music, art and film-is Black artists’ proclamation of “I am, I was and I WILL BE,” straddling genres and styles to create Black art that imagines a world not quite our own. Long before my novels about African immortals that began with My Soul to Keep, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther or the sci-fi horror of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Butler was writing Black women into imaginary worlds with aliens, giving us powers of telepathy and sending us back to the slavery era to try to fix a horribly broken past. Her collection is not far from where she grew up in Pasadena, but it’s a universe away from the humble beginnings that framed her childhood.īutler, who would have turned 72 on June 22, is often called the Mother of Afrofuturism-or Black speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror). A television series based on her novels about telepaths is in development at Amazon Prime Video, and her papers are housed within the palatial walls of the Huntington Library Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. With her six-foot height and a deep, distinctive voice that made listeners lean in to hear her every carefully chosen word, Octavia was a giant in life-and her power and impact have continued to grow since her death in 2006. I had met Octavia-and Steve-only three years earlier, at a Black science fiction, fantasy and horror conference at Clark Atlanta University.įor much of that visit, I listened to her in rapt awe while I marveled at where I was sitting, embraced by books cramming the shelves, being served lentil soup and French bread by the Octavia Butler. “I listen to music when I write,” she said.Īnd so began our 90-minute visit, which Steve and I recorded to write an article about her. We were greeted by the sound of Motown music blasting through the windows. In 2000 I made my way up the walkway of a house outside of Seattle with my husband, author Steven Barnes, to see his longtime friend Octavia Butler.
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