O is for Octavia Butler
1947–2006
Yesterday I wrote on my Facebook Page:
“Friends, which of you have read Octavia Butler's work and neglected to share it with me?”
I don’t know whether my lack of knowledge is amusing or embarrassing. I started this series because I wanted to both expand my experience and promote just a handful of deserving women writers. I didn’t know until I looked for a writer with an “O” name that there were so few African American science fiction writers. The thought had never occurred to me. I hope my subconscious was saying “naturally there are successful African American science fiction writers!”
When I found Octavia Butler I knew she was meant to be my subject.
It was clinched when I saw she attended Pasadena City College like my Dad did.
She was born to a father who shined shoes for a living until he died when she was still a young child and a mother who was a housekeeper who often took little Olivia to her jobs with her. Octavia did not know what it meant to be financially stable. When she chose writing as a career, she was told to get “a real job” with a pension. She attended Pasadena City College, Cal State Los Angeles and extension classes at UCLA. She met science fiction writer Harlan Ellison via the Open Door program at the Screen Writer’s Guild. He recommended her to the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in Pennsylvania. There were times when she was starting out she wondered if everyone else was right: she was taking the menial work from temp agencies and not seeing much success in her writing career. She took class after class after class, finally getting a publishing credit for a story in an anthology created by workshop participants.
She didn’t know that right around the corner she would become the first African American woman to be successful in the Science Fiction genre. In 1976 her first novel, Patternmaster, was published and she began a long and celebrated career as a Science Fiction writer. In 1995 she won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant which put her in an elite group of creative talent. She continues to be the only Science Fiction writer to be so honored. She won Nebula awards and Hugo awards as well.
In researching Octavia, I found some quotes that stirred my spirit. I want to close today with some of them so your soul may be stirred also.
“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”
“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”
The child in each of us
Knows paradise.
Paradise is home.
Home as it was
Or home as it should have been.
Paradise is one's own place,
One's own people,
One's own world,
Knowing and known,
Perhaps even
Loving and loved.
Yet every child
Is cast from paradise-
Into growth and new community,
Into vast, ongoing
Change.”
Tomorrow: Phillis Wheatley - Transformed from Slave to Celebrated Poet to Obscurity in her Short Lifetime
This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.
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