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T H E H U Ntin Gton L Ibrary, a Rt C Ollection S, an D B Otan Ical G Arden S The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens CALENDARCALENDAR March/April 2017 March/April General Information Telephone: 626-405-2100 Website: huntington.org Admission: Members: Free. Non-Members adult rates: Weekdays $23. Weekends $25. (See website for dis counted senior, group, and children’s rates.) Admission is free to all visitors on the first Thursday of each month with advance tickets. Hours: Open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday. Closed Tuesdays and major holidays. Dining: The 1919 café serves light meals and refreshments. Tea is served in the Rose Garden Tea Room. For tea reservations, call 626-683-8131. Enjoy Chinese cuisine in the Chinese Garden’s Freshwater Dumpling and Noodle House and specialty coffees in the Red Car coffee shop. Huntington Store: Open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday, the store carries a variety of books, prints, note cards, jewelry, UNIQUE EDITION OF JOHN MUIR’S home decor, toys, and gift items related to The Hunt ington’s collec tions. Pur chases help finance the institu tion. Store information: 626-405-2142. WRITINGS ACQUIRED elebrate spring with your family or friends by enjoying an elegant Lisa Blackburn, Editor/Photographer Easter Brunch at The Huntington on Saturday and Sunday, April New acquisitions also include a sumptuous monograph on camellias, a manuscript Lori Ann Achzet, Designer Thea M. Page, Contributing writer C 15–16, under the dome of the beautiful Rose Hills Foundation containing lectures by a close member of Galileo’s circle, and other works. Garden Court. Take a stroll in the gardens while you’re here—the roses will be coming into bloom—and see what’s new in the galleries and Senior Staff exhibitions. Visit our website for Easter Brunch details and reservations. he Huntington has acquired a unique 10-volume huntington.org/easter. edition of William Frederic Badè’s The Writings Laura Skandera Trombley of John Muir (1916–24) that incorporates 260 President T On the cover: Charles Reiffel’sBit of Silvermine – The Old Farm House (detail), 1916. The painting original photographs—most of them taken by Herbert Catherine Allgor is a recent gift from Sandra and Bram Dijkstra. See related article on page 9. Back cover: Spring W. Gleason, a nature photographer who inspired the work Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim peonies in the Chinese Garden. See what else is in bloom on page 12. Director of Education of Ansel Adams. This deluxe edition is an important addition to The Huntington’s extensive collections in early Larry J. Burik environmentalism and early California photography, Vice President of Facilities Follow us! Find links to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, and it underscores the role of fine art photography in James P. Folsom SoundCloud and the Verso blog at huntington.org the preservationist cause. Marge and Sherm Telleen / Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens The items were purchased in January at the 20th annual meeting of the Library Collectors’ Council, a Steve Hindle W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research group of 43 families who assist in the development of the collections by supporting acquisitions. Margaret Irwin Chief of Staff The Council also purchased A Monograph on the Genus Camellia (1819) by Samuel Curtis. The outsize Mitchell Morris volume contains sumptuous hand-colored aquatint Chief Information Officer exhibitions plates after watercolors by Clara Maria Pope (d. 1838), Coreen A. Rodgers one of a small number of women in England who pursued Anne and Jim Rothenberg Vice President “Becoming America: Highlights from the for Financial Affairs Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection” an artistic career in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Monograph is a landmark work of horticultural Kevin Salatino Ongoing | Scott Galleries, Fielding Wing Top: The deluxe edition of The Writings of John Muir includes 260 original photographs, literature that contains what are probably Pope’s underscoring the role of fine art photography in the preservationist cause. Above:A Hannah and Russel Kully Director Monograph on the Genus Camellia contains sumptuous illustrations by Clara Maria Pope. of the Art Collections “Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass” best-known botanical illustrations. Randy Shulman Through March 20 | Scott Galleries, Chandler Wing Additional purchases included a manuscript, ca. items—including rare books, individual manuscripts, Vice President for Advancement 1680, comprising the texts of lectures given by Carlo archival collections, and photographs—and spent “Orbit Pavilion” Rinaldini, a member of Galileo’s close circle; an nearly $3.9 million doing so,” said David Zeidberg, 2017 • APRIL | MARCH • CALENDAR Susan Turner-Lowe Extended through Sept. 4 | Celebration Lawn Vice President for Communications unpublished manuscript on the divinity of Christ, Avery Director of the Library. “We are enormously and Marketing penned around 1794 by Lewis Nicola, a Revolutionary 1 “A History of Whiskers” grateful to the Council for their generous support over War officer; and a genealogical roll of arms from the David S. Zeidberg Through March 7 | Huntington Art Gallery, Works on Paper Room the years.” Avery Director of the Library Elizabethan era. “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” “During the past two decades, the Library Collectors’ Read more about these acquisitions and see additional Opens April 8 | Library West Hall Council has helped us acquire more than 100 significant photos at huntington.org/LCC. On display in the exhibition will be one of the pages plot develops around two shape-shifting—and of motivational notes she frequently wrote to help herself sex-changing—characters, Doro and Anyanwu. The stay focused on her goals. “I am a Bestselling Writer. I exhibition will include notes Butler made about the write Bestselling Books…. Every day in every way I am two characters as she worked to develop them. researching and writing my award winning Best selling Even given the extremes of imagination, Butler Books and short stories…. Everyone of my books reaches sought to meticulously research the science in her fiction, and remains for two or more months at the top of the traveling to the Amazon to get a firsthand look at bestseller lists…. So Be It! See To It!” biological diversity there in an effort to better incorporate In 1975, she sold her first novel,Patternmaster , to biology, genetics, and medicine in her work. Climate Doubleday, quickly followed by Mind of My Mind and change concerned her, as did politics, the pharmaceutical Survivor; the trio comprise part of her “Patternist” series, industry, and a variety of social issues, and she wove depicting the evolution of humanity into three distinct them all into her writing. “Her stories resonate in very genetic groups. A review on display in the exhibition powerful ways today,” said Russell. “Perhaps even more lauds Patternmaster for its well-constructed plot and so than when they were first published.” progressive heroine, who is “a refreshing change of pace After Butler’s death, The Huntington became the from the old days.” recipient of her papers, which arrived in 2008 in two file By the late 1970s, she was able to make a living on cabinets and 35 large cartons, comprising more than her writing alone. She won her first Hugo award in 1985 8,000 items. By the time the collection had been processed for the short story “Speech Sounds,” followed by other and catalogued, scholars were already clamoring for awards, including a Locus and Nebula. access. In the past two years, the Octavia E. Butler archive The exhibition will include examples of journal has been used nearly 1,300 times—or roughly 15 times entries, photographs, and first editions of her books, per week—making it one of the most actively researched including Kindred, arguably her best-known work. The archives at The Huntington. TELLING MY STORIES book is less science fiction and more fantasy, involving an African American woman who travels back in time The Huntington presents the first major exhibition to the horrors of plantation life in pre-Civil War on the life of award-winning author Octavia E. Butler Maryland. “I wanted to reach people emotionally in a way that history tends not to,” Butler said about the book. Published in 1979, Kindred continues to new exhibition opening this spring examines the life and command widespread appeal and is regularly taught work of celebrated author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), in high schools and at the university level, and is the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious A frequently chosen for community-wide reading MacArthur “genius” award and the first African American programs and book clubs. woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre. Beyond race, Butler explored tensions between the “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” opens April 8 in the sexes and worked to develop strong female characters, West Hall of the Library and continues through Aug. 7. Butler’s a hallmark of her writing. But she also challenged literary archive resides at The Huntington. traditional gender identity. Bloodchild, for example, “She was a pioneer, a master storyteller who brought her is a story about a pregnant man, and in Wild Seed, the voice—the voice of a woman of color—to science fiction,” said Natalie Russell, assistant curator of literary manuscripts at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition. “Tired of stories featuring white, male heroes, she developed an alternative narrative from a very personal point of view.” Butler, a Pasadena, Calif., native, told the New York Times in a 2000 interview: “When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway.
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  • Octavia E. Butler Telling My Stories
    Octavia E. Butler Telling My Stories Library, West Hall April 8–August 7, 2017 1 Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a pioneer, a trailblazing storyteller who brought her voice— the voice of a woman of color—to science fiction. Her fresh approach to what some might consider a nonliterary genre framed serious and often controversial topics through a literary lens. Tackling subjects such as power, race, gender, sexuality, religion, economic and social status, the environment, and humanity, Butler combined the tropes of science fiction and fantasy with a tightly rendered and entertaining prose style. These are her stories. Her deeply developed characters contend with extraordinary situations, revealing the best and worst of the human species. As the first African American woman writer in the field of science fiction, Butler faced pressures and challenges from inside and outside her community. Tired of science fiction stories featuring only white male heroes, Butler took action. “I can write my own stories and I can write myself in,” as she liked to say, and in the process she created a new identity as a black woman role model and an award-winning author. She published 12 novels and a volume of short stories and essays before her untimely passing in 2006. “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” draws on the author’s manuscripts, correspondence, papers, and photographs, bequeathed to The Huntington, to explore the life and works of this remarkable woman. Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, Calif., on June 22, 1947. Butler discovered writing at an early age, finding that this activity suited her shy nature, her strict Baptist upbringing, and her intellectual curiosity.
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    Octavia Butler Strategic Reader collected from the Octavia Butler Symposium, Allied Media Conference 2010 and edited by Adrienne Maree Brown & Alexis Pauline Gumbs Table of Contents: - Intro - What is Emergent Strategy - Octavia’s Work as a Whole Identity Transformation Apocalypse Impact - Specific Series/Stories Patternist (Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark, Patternmaster) Lilith’s Brood/Xenogenesis (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago) Parables (Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents) Other Stories - Other Relevant Work Mentioned (music, writers, etc) Intro This reader emerged out of the Octavia Butler Symposium at the Allied Media Conference in 2010. The symposium happened in 3 parts - a) an initial presentation by host/editor Adrienne Maree Brown, b) a fishbowl conversation where everyone in the group participated in addressing meta-questions about Octavia's work, and c) several small group conversations on particular series. Groups have since started reading circles, strategic circles and other gatherings around Octavia's work in their local cities/regions. This is by no means a comprehensive or complete reader - there are books (Kindred, Fledgling, Survivor) that are barely touched on. We hope that this can be a growing reader which both helps people see Octavia’s work in a new light and serves as a collecting point for thinking about her work. What follows are strategic questions to consider about Octavia's work as a whole, and then about specific series/stories. We invite feedback and additions. "We are all vibrations. The moment we share here is a preparation for the next moment. Octavia leaves her writing in order to prepare us for the next meeting." "Being able to create and imagine bigger is a process of decolonization of our dreams.
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    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.
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  • OCTAVIA BUTLER NOW J21COLORED Copy THE+
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  • Print Kindred
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  • Female Identity and Race in Contemporary Afrofuturist Narratives
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