![]() Participants receive a 15% discount at our bookstore. Minor changes in the reading list are possible, depending on the inclinations of the group.īooks are not included in the cost of the class. In subsequent meetings we will read Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, Lilith’s Brood and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Please read the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories before the first meeting. Butlers work broke innumerable barriers and helped open the field of science fiction to writers and readers it had never had before. It just turned out that it was called science fiction.' - Octavia E. I was teaching in New York when I came across Octavia E Butlers Kindred in a secondary-school catalogue of novels recommended to support diversity. How does a marginalized perspective envision aliens as well as a rapidly alienating world? What can we learn about dystopias from an author whose history has always been a dystopia, and will that make us better, wiser, more compassionate human beings? How can we read, write and talk about joy, hope and community at a time of despair? Whether you have read Butler’s works before or are arriving to them for the first time, these themes will be explored in our discussions. 'I write about people who do extraordinary things. An American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. Butler first began writing science fiction and fantasy in the 1970s, when the genre was still dominated by the visions of mainstream white authors. ![]() Through our journey with this reading group, participants will have an opportunity to engage with the works of a wildly imaginative and strikingly original intellect. The group will conclude on the day after Butler’s 73rd birthday, with a study of some of her nonfiction and her impact on the science fiction community and other authors. We will discuss Butler’s short fiction and some of her novels. Butler, the first renowned black woman author in science fiction and fantasy, whose works ring more and more prophetic as we step into 2020. This reading group will visit (or revisit) the works of Octavia E. Change and adaptation are central to the novel’s main character’s survival and perseverance-both in the past and present.This reading group will take place online via Zoom. Hampton argues that “the ability to change and adapt to nonconformity is often essential if a character wishes to survive in any of Butler’s narratives.” Kindred, her extremely popular 1979 novel, mixes time travel with historical fiction. ![]() In her works, Butler was both speculative and exploratory in considering distant, alternative, or probable futures. ![]() These terms are seen for what they are, arbitrary markers designed to give stability to that which is unstable and ambiguous.” Hampton notes that, “hrough her characters and narratives, readers are better able to explore the meaning of various identities such as race, sex, and gender. Butler has a persistent influence-one that spans well outside of the science fiction genre.Ī pioneer in science fiction, Butler not only helped to pave the way for future male and female African American sci-fi writers, but reshaped the genre itself, bringing it into the 21st century with her complex treatments of race, identity, and the body politic-all explored as changing, fluid constructs. Ten years after her death, the writing of Octavia E.
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