RADIO IMAGINATION: Artists and Writers in the Archive of Octavia E
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Toward a Diasporan Ethics by Ianna Hawkins Owen A
Ordinary Failures: Toward a Diasporan Ethics by Ianna Hawkins Owen A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Darieck Scott, Chair Professor Leigh Raiford Professor Juana María Rodríguez Professor Michael Cohen Summer 2016 Abstract Ordinary Failures: Toward a Diasporan Ethics by Ianna Hawkins Owen Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professor Darieck Scott, Chair In Ordinary Failures I develop a new conception of “diaspora” as the ordinary failure of recognitions and solidarities founded on ideological and ancestral ties. Informed by the queer studies turn toward negativity and the relational turn in African diaspora studies, my project examines the interventions of artists and writers of the diaspora who opt to recite intraracial failure (between blacks) in the face of their structurally overdetermined failure as minoritized subjects. I identify in textual and visual objects an engagement with the promise of intimacy attendant to the artist’s lived experience of diaspora and there I aim to expose the limits of diaspora discourse. My explorations of the failures of diaspora are aided by pushing on queer theories of negativity to speak to race. This project departs from traditional approaches to black failure such as the black mainstream’s condemnation or eschewal of black failure in favor of respectability politics and the black left’s redemption of failure through revisionist narratives of resistance. -
Experience, Research, and Writing: Octavia E. Butler As an Author Of
Experience, Research, and Writing Octavia E. Butler as an Author of Disability Literature Sami Schalk In a journal entry on November 12, 1973, Octavia E. Butler writes: “I should stay healthy! The bother and worry of being sick and not being able to afford to do anything but complain about the pain and hope it goes away is Not conducive to good (or prolific) writing.”1 At this time, at the age of twenty-six, Butler had not yet sold her first novel. She was just on the cusp of what would be an incredible writing career, starting with her first novel, Patternmaster, published a mere three years later. But in 1973,Butler was an essentially unknown and struggling writer who regularly battled poverty, health, and her own harsh inner critic. From the outset of her career, Butler’s texts have been lauded, critiqued, and read again and again in relationship to race, gender, and sexuality. Only recently, however, has her work been taken up in respect to disability.2 Therí A. Pickens argues,“Situating disability at or near the center of Butler’s work (alongside race and gender) lays bare how attention to these categories of analysis shifts the conversation about the content of Butler’s work.”3 Building upon Pickens and other recent work on Butler and disability, I seek to change conversations about Butler’s work among feminist, race, and genre studies scholars while also encouraging more attention to Butler by disability studies scholars. In this article, I use evidence from Butler’s personal papers, public interviews, and publications to position Butler as an author of disability literature due to her lived experi- ences, her research, and her writing. -
Figuring the Future in Los(T) Angeles
1 MUSEUM DIGITAL ARCHIVE NOW DIG THIS! ART & BLACK LOS ANGELES 1960–1980 Figuring the Future in Los(t) Angeles HAZEL V. CARBY ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN COMPARATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 1, NO. 1 (2003): 19–34. Los Angeles, California, is a city that has a very complex symbolic relation to the rest of the US. For me, the story of the Belmont Learning Center vividly dramatizes the betrayal of minority dreams by the boosterism, corruption, ineptitude, and potential for environmental disaster that characterizes the political culture of the city. Planned more than a decade ago at a projected cost of $200 million, it will be, if completed, the most expensive public high school ever built in the US.1 Construction of the Belmont Learning Center proceeded despite warnings issued by the State Division of Oil and Gas about the dangers of the site, an abandoned oil field. The black officials of the school board were desperate to solve the overcrowding and generally dire conditions in which so many young black, Latino, and poor students do not get educated in the Los Angeles Unified School District. But potentially explosive methane gas and toxic hydrogen sulfide gas, known to cause neurological damage, seeped into the school structure for which there appeared to be no remediation. Finally, after spending $170 million, the School Board voted in January 2000 to abandon the project.2 However, Superintendent Roy Romer revived the project, and, with $175 million spent so far, completion could add yet another $100 million to the costs. Oil-well logs have revealed an earthquake fault underneath already existing buildings on the campus; any seismic activity would cause a rush of the gases with devastating consequences.3 More than a metaphor for the city, this unfolding tragic narrative actually embodies the multi-layered political, social, economic, racialized and environmental complexity of Los Angeles from its fissures and abandoned oil fields below ground to the concrete highways soaring through, around and above its neighborhoods. -
Print Kindred
Kindred-no Times ten 11/5/04 11:47 am Page 265 Reader’s Guide Critical Essay ROBERT CROSSLEY University of Massachusetts at Boston “What tangled skeins are the genealogies of slavery!” Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I First-person American slave narratives should have ceased being written when the last American citizen born into institutionalized slavery died. But the literary form has persisted, just as the legacy of slavery has per- sisted, into the present. The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of what has been christened the “neo-slave narrative,” a fictional mutation of the autobiographies of nineteenth-century Americans who lived as slaves. Among the many historical novels, often with first-person narrators, that have recreated the era of slavery, some of the best known are Margaret Walker’s Jubilee (1966), David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (1981), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Mor- rison’s Beloved (1987), and Charles R. Johnson’s Middle Passage (1990). Octavia Butler’s hybrid of memoir and fantasy is a distinctive contribu- tion to the genre of neo-slave narrative. Although Kindred is not itself a work of science fiction, Butler has brought to the creation of this narrative the sensibilities of an author who works largely outside the tradition of realism. When Kindred first appeared twenty-five years ago, no one had thought of using the fictional conventions of time travel to transport a modern African American to an antebellum plantation. Time-traveling Kindred-no Times ten 11/5/04 11:47 am Page 266 266 READER’S GUIDE narratives are always replete with paradoxical questions: If you travel back a century and a half and kill your own great-great-grandfather, can you yourself ever be born? Is it as possible for the future to influence the past as it is for the past to shape the future? But then every good work of fiction is paradoxical: It lies like the truth. -
Candace Hunter Exhibition on View January 25 - March 17, 2019
so be it. see to it. candace hunter exhibition on view january 25 - march 17, 2019 Inspired by the urgency of the handwritten affirmation ‘So be it. See to it’ in one of Octavia Butler’s journals, Chicago-based artist Candace Hunter responds with a series of intimate collages set in dialogue with Butler’s fiction. Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction of the 1970s through early 2000s feels eerily prescient in a contemporary moment wrought by political upheaval, resurgent racism, and the ongoing devastation of climate change. Hunter’s visual storytelling likewise offers portals into other worlds. Using collage as an aesthetic strategy for speculative fictions, she offers an embodied disruption of the “rational cosmology” of traditional pictorial and political order: contradictions of perspective and scale, time and space; reimaginings of race and gender, past and present. Through layers of destruction and creation, Hunter unfixes our sense of reality as neutral, given, or immutable. Both Hunter and Butler candace hunter shape alternate realities, prompting us to contemplate our own. Curator: Amy Halliday Curatorial Assistant: Ray Mendel Note: All italicised quotations with Hunter’s images are directly from Octavia Butler’s books, corresponding with the novels or series represented. fledgling Multimedia collage series (2016) After Octavia Butler, Fledgling (2005) “Ordinary sun exposure burns your skin even though you’re black?” “I’m...” I stopped. I had been about to protest that I was brown, not black, but before I could speak, I understood what he meant. In this series of collages, Hunter layers evocations of vulnerability (youthful glances, fledgling birds, softly blooming flowers) with those of disarming or directed power (coursing fire, ancient architecture). -
History, Race and Gender in the Science Fiction of Octavia Estelle
HISTORY, RACE AND GENDER IN THE SCIENCE FICTION OF OCTAVIA ESTELLE BUTLER A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Master of Arts In the Graduate School of The Ohio State University by Ben Davis Jr., B. S. Ed. ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Master's Examination Committee: Approved by Christian K. Zacher Patrick B. Mullen ~ef~ College of English Copyrig ht by Ben Davis Jr. 1992 To my mother and father, Leontyne and Ben i i ACKNOWLEOOEMENTS My sincerest thanks, appreciation, and gratitude to everyone who has encouraged me and helped me realize this graduate thesis. To my very first literature professor, the late Dr. Stanley J. Kahrl, my mentor and friend who instilled in me the drive for excellence and love for the written word; Dr. Christian Zacher, who took a chance on me to guide me through my research and my writing on this project; Dr. Patrick Mullen, my second reader and guide; my closest friends, Albert, David, James Daniels and James Moorer, who are always behind me; my brothers Michael and Thomas, whose love and admiration I will forever cherish; Viola Newton, who is both a wonderful colleague and friend; and Octavia Estelle Butler, the beauty and magic of whose words have inspired me with the means to do my work. iii VITA April 28, 1962 Born - Cleveland, Ohio 1990 - 1991 Graduate Research Associateship, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS0 FSTUDY Major Field: English Studies in: Twentieth Century American Literature, African American Literature, and Science Fiction iv TABLEOFCONTENTS DEDiCATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ViTA iv CHAPTER PAGE I. -
Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: an Annotated Bibliography of Authors Rebecca M
Western Washington University Western CEDAR A Collection of Open Access Books and Books and Monographs Monographs 10-2016 Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography of Authors Rebecca M. Marrall Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/cedarbooks Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Library and Information Science Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons Recommended Citation Marrall, Rebecca M., "Women of Color in Speculative Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography of Authors" (2016). A Collection of Open Access Books and Monographs. 8. https://cedar.wwu.edu/cedarbooks/8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Books and Monographs at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in A Collection of Open Access Books and Monographs by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Women of Color in Speculative Fiction An Annotated Bibliography of Authors Rebecca M. Marrall Author: Marrall, R. M. Annotated Bibliography Last Updated: Sept. 22, 2016 Women of Color in Speculative Fiction An Annotated Bibliography of Authors Table of Contents Authors, Themes, and Works ................................................................................................. 3 Renee Ahdieh .................................................................................................................................... -
©2020 Bernabe Sebastian Mendoza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©2020 Bernabe Sebastian Mendoza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MYTHIC FERTILITY, IMPURITY, AND CREOLIZATION IN THE WORKS OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER By BERNABE SEBASTIAN MENDOZA A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In Partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Comparative Literature Written under the direction of Drucilla Cornell And approved by __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Mythic Fertility, Impurity, and Creolization In the Works of Octavia E. Butler By BERNABE SEBASTIAN MENDOZA Dissertation Director: Drucilla Cornell My dissertation focuses on how Octavia Butler’s work intervenes in dominant conceptions of the human. The dualistic thinking that informs the notion of the human within Western discourse is attached to oppositional dichotomies that the genre of science fiction takes on as a human/nonhuman opposition in alien invasion contagion narratives. I connect Butler’s overturning of binary thinking to the work of Black and women of color feminism. Part of my own intervention in this project is to fully situate Butler’s work within the tradition of black feminist thought. I read her work through a creolizing methodology that brings together themes and discourses that disrupt oppositional binaries. The themes I weave together throughout this project and that I see as Butler herself also interweaving in order to overturn dualistic thinking include those associated with creolization, slavery, incest, black women’s reproductive rights and politics, the retelling of mythical and biblical myths attached to monstrous and damned female archetypes, the altering of the alien with the genre of science fiction, shapeshifting and its reconfiguring of gender, aleatory matter, and the Cartesian mind-body duality. -
Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: Black Women Writers and Science Fiction Author(S): Gregory Jerome Hampton and Wanda M
Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: Black Women Writers and Science Fiction Author(s): Gregory Jerome Hampton and Wanda M. Brooks Source: The English Journal, Vol. 92, No. 6 (Jul., 2003), pp. 70-74 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3650538 Accessed: 14-08-2017 19:37 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Journal This content downloaded from 130.157.139.112 on Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:37:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: BlackWomen Writers and Science Fiction GREGORY JEROME HAMPTON AND WANDA M. BROOKS frican American literature has always had elements of what many would refer to as science fiction. As is common in a significant number of books written by and about African Americans, science fiction has historically been focused on narratives of the alienated and/or marginalized "other." U In African American literature for children and adults, many authors approach the themes of alienation and "otherness" through the gen- res of historical and realistic fiction as well as biography. -
QUEER FAMILIES in OCTAVIA BUTLER's SCIENCE FICTION By
QUEER FAMILIES IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S SCIENCE FICTION by Jess S. Bennett A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Middle Tennessee State University December 2019 Thesis Committee: Dr. Elyce Helford, Thesis Director Dr. Laura White, Reader This thesis is dedicated to Bronson Mahrt, Jake Castle, Micah Hallman, and Michael J. Braithwaite ii ABSTRACT This thesis explores the constellation of race, gender, and sexuality in two novel series by African American feminist author Octavia E. Butler, published from the 1970s through the 1980s. The central pursuit of this project is to explore the “Butler Family,” which refers to the queer, interracial families of Butler’s fiction that contest racist, sexist, and heteronormative hegemonies. This exploration first observes how Butler’s queer characters come to understand their identities within a familial context. Next, the thesis analyzes how Butler champions queer, feminist, anti-racist constructions of family for their active resistance of oppression. The closing chapter combines theorizations of queer futurity with Afro-Futurism to explore how the children of the Butler Family secure a queer future. To explore Butler’s progressive future, this thesis analyzes two novels of the Patternist series, Mind of My Mind (1977) and Wild Seed (1980), in addition to the novels of the Xenogenesis trilogy, which include Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). Her Patternist series, which focuses on superpowered humans in the throes of a breeding imperative imposed by the antagonist Doro, presents the readers with Anyanwu, a black, bisexual shapeshifter who forms an interracial family with a female partner and defies Doro’s heteronormativity. -
Octavia Estelle Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler Biography Quick Facts Octavia Estelle Butler is “the first African-American woman to gain * 1946-2006 popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer” * African- (Hine 208). She was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California, American to Laurice and Octavia M. (Guy) Butler. Of five pregnancies, Butler science fiction was the only child that her mother was able to carry to term. Her fa- writer ther, who worked as a shoe shiner, died when Butler was very young. * First published Most of her memories are actually stories that she heard from her mother and grandmother. Her mother and she lived in a very racially novel was mixed neighborhood. The unifying factor was the struggle to make Patternmaster ends meet. Butler “never personally experienced the more rigid forms of a segregated society” (Smith 144). She was very shy in school and describes herself as a daydreamer. These factors made it very diffi- cult to succeed in school. She overcame dyslexia, and “began writing when [she] was 10 years old . to escape loneliness and boredom” (Locher 104). At age twelve, she became interested in science fiction. Butler received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College. She then attended California State University, Los An- geles and the University of California, Los Angeles. She credits her success to nonacademic programs, though. Two of these programs are the Open Door Program of the Screen Writers Guild of America and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. While attending school, Butler held down a lot of odd jobs. -
Howards End in the Anthropocene
Octavia Butler (1947-2006) • Born Pasadena, California • Only child in Baptist household; raised by mother and grandmother; begins writing age 10 • Meets Harlan Ellison in 1969 at screenwriting workshop • Attends Clarion Science Fiction Workshop in 1970 • Meets Samuel R. (Chip) Delaney • Selection of Clarion alumni and teachers: • Tobias S. Buckell (1999) • Kim Stanley Robinson (1975) • Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin New York Times obituary As a student, Ms. Butler became a protégée of the • Wins MacArthur fellowship (Genius grant) in renowned science fiction writer Harlan Ellison. Over 1995 the next half-dozen years, living alone in a modest Los • 1st science fiction writer Angeles apartment, she rose each day at 2 a.m. to write. She supported herself through a series of dystopian jobs: dishwasher, telemarketer, potato chips inspector. Octavia Butler Selected Works Patternist series 1. Patternmaster (1976) 2. Mind of My Mind (1977) 3. Survivor (1978) 4. Wild Seed (1980) 5. Clay's Ark (1984) Xenogenesis series (Lilith’s Brood) 1. Dawn (1987) 2. Adulthood Rites (1988) 3. Imago (1989) Parable of the Sower (1993) Kindred (1979) Parable of the Talents (1998) Fledgling (2005) As Katrina was happening, in the aftermath of Katrina, a lot of people were talking about Octavia Butler and how the Parable series made them think about that. Explain. BUTLER: I wrote the two Parable books back in the 1990s. And they are books about, as I said, what happens because we don’t trouble to correct some of the problems that we’re brewing for ourselves right now. Global warming is one of those problems.