Editing Octavia E. Butler (section)

==Themes==

=== Critique of present-day hierarchies ===
In multiple interviews and essays, Butler explained her view of humanity: inherently flawed by an innate tendency towards [[Social stratification|hierarchical thinking]] which leads to [[tribalism]], [[caste]], intolerance, violence and, if not checked, the ultimate destruction of our species.<ref name="Gant" /><ref name="Pfeiffer" /><ref name="AEW">"Butler, Octavia E.", ''American Ethnic Writers'', Revised edn. Vol. 1. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2009. 168–175.</ref>

"Simple [[pecking order|peck-order]] bullying", she wrote in her essay "A World without Racism",<ref name="WWR">[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5245679 "A World without Racism."] ''NPR Weekend Edition Saturday''. September 1, 2001.</ref> "is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to [[racism]], [[sexism]], [[ethnocentrism]], [[Class discrimination|classism]], and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world." Her stories, then, often replay humanity's domination of the weak by the strong as a type of [[parasitism]].<ref name="AEW" /> These "others", whether aliens, vampires, superhuman, or slave masters, find themselves defied by a protagonist who embodies difference, diversity, and change, so that, as John R. Pfeiffer notes, "In one sense [Butler's] fables are trials of solutions to the self-destructive condition in which she finds mankind."<ref name="Pfeiffer" />

{{quote box
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| width = 20em
| quote = Embrace diversity<br />
Unite—<br />
or be divided,<br />
robbed,<br />
ruled,<br />
killed<br />
By those who see you as prey.<br />
Embrace diversity<br />
Or be destroyed.
| salign = left
| source = —From "Earthseed: The Books of the Living," ''Parable of the Sower''.
}}

=== Remaking of the human ===
In his essay on the [[Sociobiology|sociobiological]] backgrounds of Butler's ''Xenogenesis'' trilogy, J. Adam Johns describes how Butler's narratives counteract the [[death drive]] behind the hierarchical impulse with an innate love of life ([[biophilia hypothesis|biophilia]]), particularly of different, strange life.<ref name="Johns">Johns, J. Adam. "Becoming Medusa: Octavia Butler's ''Lilith's Brood'' and Sociobiology." ''Science Fiction Studies'' 37.3 (2010): 382–400.</ref> Specifically, Butler's stories feature [[Genetics in fiction|gene manipulation]], interbreeding, [[interracial marriage]] and [[miscegenation]], [[Symbiosis in fiction|symbiosis]], mutation, alien contact, [[rape]], [[intersectionality]], contamination, and other forms of hybridity as the means to correct the sociobiological causes of hierarchical violence.<ref name="Ferreira">Ferreira, Maria Aline. "Symbiotic Bodies and Evolutionary Tropes in the Work of Octavia Butler." ''Science Fiction Studies'' 37. 3 (November 2010): 401–415.</ref> As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, "in [Butler's] narratives the undoing of the human body is both literal and metaphorical, for it signifies the profound changes necessary to shape a world not organized by hierarchical violence."<ref name="Kilgore">Kilgore, De Witt Douglas, and Ranu Samantrai. "A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler." ''Science Fiction Studies'' 37.3 (November 2010): 353–361. {{JSTOR|25746438}}.</ref> The evolutionary maturity achieved by the bioengineered hybrid protagonist at the end of the story, then, signals the possible evolution of the dominant community in terms of tolerance, acceptance of diversity, and a desire to wield power responsibly.<ref name="AEW" />

=== Survivor as hero ===
Butler's protagonists are disenfranchised individuals who endure, compromise, and embrace radical change in order to survive. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, her stories focus on minority characters whose historical background makes them already intimate with brutal violation and exploitation, and therefore the need to compromise to survive.<ref name="Kilgore" /> Even when endowed with extra, paranormal abilities, these characters are forced to experience unprecedented physical, mental, and emotional distress and exclusion to ensure a minimal degree of [[Agency (sociology)|agency]] and to prevent humanity from achieving self-destruction.<ref name="Gant" /><ref name="Belle" /> In many of her stories, their acts of courage become acts of understanding, and in some cases, love, as they reach a crucial compromise with those in power.<ref name="AEW" /> Ultimately, Butler's focus on disenfranchised characters serves to illustrate both the historical exploitation of minorities and how the resolve of one such exploited individual may bring on critical change.<ref name="Gant" />

=== Creation of alternative communities ===
Butler's stories feature mixed communities founded by African protagonists and populated by diverse, if similar-minded individuals. Members may be humans of African, European, or Asian descent, extraterrestrial (such as the N'Tlic in [[Bloodchild and Other Stories|''Bloodchild'']]), from a different species (such as the vampiric Ina in [[Fledgling (Butler novel)|''Fledgling'']]), and cross-species (such as the human-Oankali Akin and Jodahs in the [[Lilith's Brood|''Xenogenesis'' trilogy]]). In some stories, the community's hybridity results in a flexible view of sexuality and gender (for instance, the [[Polyamory|polyamorous]] extended families in ''Fledgling''). Thus, Butler creates bonds between groups that are generally considered to be separate and unrelated, and suggests hybridity as "the potential root of good family and blessed community life".<ref name="Kilgore" /> 

''[[Kindred (novel)|Kindred]]'' is one of the only works of 20th-century American literature to feature a [[Interracial marriage in the United States|married interracial couple]].{{citation needed|date=May 2025}} As Farah Peterson comments, in an American society gripped by racism, it took "a fantasy novelist... to imagine how one of these marriages would work in practice" and write the possibility of such a relationship into literary history.<ref name="peterson">{{cite web|last=Peterson|first=Farah|title=Alone with Kindred|url=https://www.threepennyreview.com/alone-with-kindred/|publisher=threepennyreview|access-date=30 August 2023}}</ref>

=== Relationship to Afrofuturism ===
{{quote box
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| quote = Charlie Rose: "What then is central to what you want to say about race?"<br /><br />
Butler: "Do I want to say something central about race? Aside from, 'Hey we're here!'?"
| salign = left
| source = —From Butler's interview on ''[[Charlie Rose]]''. Thursday, June 1, 2000.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rose |first1=Charlie |title=Octavia Butler |url=https://charlierose.com/videos/28978 |website=Charlie Rose |access-date=5 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200605145423/https://charlierose.com/videos/28978 |archive-date=5 June 2020}}</ref>
}}

Author Octavia E. Butler is known for blending science fiction with African American spiritualism.<ref>Octavia E. Butler. (2017, April 28). Biography; A&E Television Networks. https://www.biography.com/writer/octavia-e-butler</ref>

Butler's work has been associated with the genre of [[Afrofuturism]],<ref name="Sinker">Sinker, Mark. "Loving the Alien." ''The Wire'' 96 (February 1992): 30–32.</ref> a term coined by [[Mark Dery]] to describe "[[speculative fiction]] that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century [[technoculture]]".<ref name="Bould">Bould, Mark. "The Ships Landed Long Ago: Afrofuturism and Black SF", ''Science Fiction Studies'' 34.2 (July 2007): 177–186. {{JSTOR|4241520}}.</ref> Some critics, however, have noted that while Butler's protagonists are of African descent, the communities they create are multi-ethnic and, sometimes, multi-species. As [[De Witt Douglas Kilgore]] and [[Ranu Samantrai]] explain in their 2010 memorial to Butler, while keeping "an [[Afrocentrism|afro-centric]] sensibility at the core of narratives", her "insistence on hybridity beyond the point of discomfort" and grim themes deny both the ethnocentric [[escapism]] of afrofuturism and the sanitized perspective of white-dominated [[Pluralism (political philosophy)|liberal pluralism]].<ref name="Kilgore" />

''[[Wild Seed (novel)|Wild Seed]]'', of the Patternist series, is considered to particularly fit ideas of Afrofuturist thematic concerns, as the narrative of two immortal Africans Doro and Anyanwu features science fiction technologies and an [[Alternate history|alternate anti-colonialist history]] of seventeenth-century America.<ref name="Canavan">Canavan, Gerry. "[http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=english_fac Bred to Be Superhuman: Comic Books and Afrofuturism in Octavia Butler's Patternist Series] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151211163347/http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=english_fac|date=11 December 2015}}." ''Paradoxa'' 25 (2013): 253–287.</ref><ref name="Off the Planet">{{Cite book|title=Off the Planet|year=2004|publisher=John Libbey Publishing|isbn=978-0-86196-938-8|editor-last=Hayward|editor-first=Philip|doi=10.2307/j.ctt2005s0z}}</ref>