We're trying out a new feature at the LibraryRunner newsletter: author spotlights! Let's get to know the acclaimed writer Octavia Butler:
Octavia Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother worked as a domestic cleaner, who was not always treated well by her employers. Theirs was a varied neighborhood and despite unofficial segregation, Butler was able to see a variety of people and experiences. She wrote stories from the age of ten, and turned towards SF at twelve:
As she learned more science, she became fascinated with its possibilities. Butler's mother wanted her to pursue security though being a secretary, but instead the young writer survived on a series of odd jobs that allowed her to dedicate as much time as possible to writing. She attended Pasadena City College at night, and saw Black Power politics in action, which also informed her writing.
During her writing career of about 30 years before an untimely death at just 58, Butler became known as a leader and shaper of Afrofuturisism. She disliked being categorized as an SF writer, since she routinely defied the traditional boundaries of that genre and attracted wide audiences. She claimed three in particular: black readers, science-fiction fans, and feminists Butler won two Hugos and two Nebulas, among many other honors and awards, and was the first SF writer to be given a MacArthur grant.
We have several of Butler's works available at the library (my own favorite is the Lilith's Brood trilogy). Come on in and grab one for an exciting reading experience!
Parable of the Sower by 3rd Floor ; PS3552.U827 P37 2000
Kindred by
The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time Dana's sojourns become longer and more dangerous, until it is uncertain whether or not her life will end, long before it has even begun.
Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago by
Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories by
Both an author and a trained anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston has risen to be one of the most influential authors of American Literature. Born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama,
Hurston grew up in the all Black town of Eatonville, Florida a place she would later use as a setting in her fiction.
Hurston studied anthropology at both Howard University and Barnard College. After college she conducted research in the Caribbean and throughout the Southern United States focusing on a variety of subjects including black folklore, song traditions, and the roots of African culture in the South. Her book Mules and Men, is perhaps her most well known ethnographic collection.
Though Hurston greatly contributed to the field of anthropology, she is probably best known as a prominent player in the Harlem Renaissance. Besides her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston also wrote poetry, a collaborative play with Langston Hughes, and continued her ethnographic writing, often using her experience in the field as inspiration for her fictional work. Many of her characters speak in Black Southern vernacular which Hurston recorded during her ethnographic research. This use of vernacular by Hurston in her fiction was meant to accurately capture the speech patterns of Black people in the South. However, it was not without controversy as some of her contemporaries accused her of caricature and wanting to appeal to white audiences.
Hurston’s conservative views, such as opposing integration, also put her at odds with many Black artists and academics of the era. Her views were in part shaped by the independent all Black town of Eatonville which she saw as an example for other communities. Hurston’s views of herself as well as race are summed up in her essay entitled “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”:
But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
In part because of her political views, Hurston was all but forgotten leading up to her death in 1960. However in the later part of the 20th century, Hurston’s work experienced a revival. The author Alice Walker and other scholars sought to reestablish Hurston’s place in the canon of American literature. Hurston’s strong female characters, such as Janie, the protagonist in Their Eyes Were Watching God, were especially praised. Hurston’s contributions of both anthropological and literary works continue to influence culture today.
Hurston lead a rich life and this mini biography barely touches on her achievements. To learn more about Hurston's life and works check out one of book below:
Attributions: