Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler
Susana M. Morris
A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work.Â
As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanityâour innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American projectâthe nationâs transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernautâmade possible by chattel slaveryâto a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion.Â
In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butlerâs story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, womenâs liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butlerâs personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butlerâs stories.Â
Morris explains what drove She wrote because she felt she must. âWho was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for Godâs sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldnât stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because youâre afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. Itâs about not being able to stop at all.âÂ