Summary: Octavia E. Butler’s Birthday Special:<br> An extraordinary writer.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> Octavia E. Butler, Part 1: Biography and Themes<br> compiled from Wikipedia<br> Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 June 22 – 2006 February 24) was an American science fiction writer. A multiple-recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.<br> Biography<br> “I began writing about power because I had so little.”<br> -Octavia E. Butler, in Carolyn S. Davidson’s “The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler”<br> Early life<br> Octavia Estelle Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshine man. Butler’s father died when she was seven, so Octavia was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment. While growing up in the racially-integrated community of Pasadena allowed Butler to experience cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of segregation, she became acquainted with the workings of white supremacy when she accompanied her mother to her cleaning work and witnessed her entering white people’s houses through back doors and being spoken to or about in disrespectful ways. Many times, Butler’s mother would bring home books and magazines the white families had discarded for her young daughter to read.<br> From an early age, an almost paralyzing shyness made it difficult for Butler to socialize with other children. Her awkwardness, paired with a slight dyslexia that made schoolwork a torment, made her believe she was “ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless.” Eventually, she grew to almost six feet tall, becoming an easy target for bullies. As a result, she frequently passed the time reading at the Pasadena Public Library and writing reams and reams of pages in her “big pink notebook.” Hooked at first on fairy tales and horse stories, she quickly became interested in science fiction magazines such as Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Galaxy and began reading stories by Zenna Henderson, John Brunner, and Theodore Sturgeon.<br> At age ten, she begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter on which she “pecked [her] stories two fingered.” At age twelve, watching the televised version of the film Devil Girl from Mars convinced her that she could write a better story, so she drafted what would later become the basis for her Patternist novels. Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of thirteen when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel conveyed the realities of segregation in five words: “Honey… Negroes can’t be writers.” Nevertheless, Butler persevered in her desire to publish a story, even asking her junior-high science teacher, Mr. Pfaff, to type the first manuscript she submitted to a science fiction magazine.<br> After graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College at night. As a freshman, she won a college-wide short story contest, her first fifteen dollars earned as a writer. She also got the “germ of the idea” for what would become her best-selling novel, Kindred, when a young African-American classmate involved in the Black Power Movement loudly criticized previous generations of African-Americans for being subservient to whites. As she explained in later interviews, the young man’s remarks instigated her to respond with a story that would give historical context to that shameful subservience so that it could be understood as silent but courageous survival. Butler graduated from PCC in 1968.<br> Rise to success<br>
