https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler: Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) 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, which is nicknamed the "Genius Grant".
Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 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.
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 up to be almost six feet (1.8 m) 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, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Galaxy and began reading stories by Zenna Henderson, John Brunner, and Theodore Sturgeon.
At age ten, she begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter on which she "pecked [her] stories two fingered." At twelve, watching the televised version of the film Devil Girl from Mars convinced her 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.
After graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College at night. As a freshman at PCC, she won a college-wide short story contest, getting her first earnings (fifteen dollars) 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 a 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. In 1968, Butler graduated from PCC with an associate of arts degree with a focus in History.
In interviews with Charles Rowell and Randall Kenan, Butler credited the struggles of her working-class mother as an important influence on her writing. Because Mrs. Butler received little formal education herself, she made sure that young Octavia was given the opportunity to learn by bringing her reading materials that her white employers threw away, from magazines to advanced books.
She also encouraged Butler to write. She bought her daughter her first typewriter when she was ten years old, and, seeing her hard at work on a story, casually remarked...
that maybe one day she could become a writer,
causing Butler to realize that it was possible to make a living as an author. A decade later, Mrs. Butler would pay more than a month's rent to have an agent review her daughter's work. She also provided Butler with the money she had been saving for dental work to pay for Butler's scholarship so she could attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, where Butler sold her first two stories.
A second person to play an influential role in Butler's work was American writer Harlan Ellison. As a teacher at the Open Door Workshop of the Screen Writers Guild of America, he gave Butler her first honest and constructive criticism on her writing after years of lukewarm responses from composition teachers and baffling rejections from publishers. Impressed by her work, Ellison suggested she attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, and even contributed $100 towards her application fee. As the years passed, Ellison's mentorship became a close friendship.
Butler began reading science fiction at a young age, but quickly became disenchanted by the genre's unimaginative portrayal of ethnicity and class as well as by its lack of noteworthy female protagonists. She then set to correct those gaps by, as De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai point out, "choosing to write self-consciously as an African-American woman marked by a particular history" —what Butler termed as "writing myself in." Butler's stories, therefore, are usually written from the perspective of a marginalized black woman whose difference from the dominant agents increases her potential for reconfiguring the future of her society.
"I began writing about power because I had so little."
~(Octavia E. Butler, in Carolyn S. Davidson's "The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler.)~
In an interview by Randall Kenan, Octavia E. Butler discusses how her life experiences as a child shaped most of her thinking. As a writer, Butler was able to use her writing as a vehicle to critique history under the lenses of feminism. In the interview, she discusses the research that had to be done in order to write her bestselling novel, Kindred. Most of it is based on visiting libraries as well as historic landmarks with respect to what she is investigating. Butler admits that she writes science fiction because she does not want her work to be labeled or used as a marketing tool. She wants the readers to be genuinely interested in her work and the story she provides, but at the same time she fears that people will not read her work because of the "science fiction" label that they have.
