Before I get started, just an aside…if you’re trying to quit smoking and you use nicotine patches, don’t wear them while you sleep. Otherwise you’ll have hallucinations that, somehow, lead you to blog post ideas, such as this one. The more you know…
Octavia Butler is, by default, my favorite black science fiction writer. “Default” because I haven’t read other authors, though I’m very open to suggestions. Anyway, I discovered her during my DC years while working at a bookstore (eight years later, STILL my favorite job). I heard the name before, but never read any of her work. With my 40% discount in hand, I purchased Lilith’s Brood. Read the back cover and was intrigued. Read the entire collection (a series of three novels in one book) from beginning to end and I couldn’t put it down.
Her writing style was straightforward; not a lot of syllable wizardry or acrobatics. Yet, her imagination ran wild and it was clear in her novels and stories that Butler loved the worlds and alternate realities she created and shared. Maybe I’m biased, perhaps because I’m writing about her, but she was the quintessential fiction writer: know your stuff, write in clear language, use the full range of your imagination, don’t fear the story and give the reader some credit (not everything needs explanation). Perhaps the first point was her greatest strength. Butler researched everything, read books about anything related to science to stay within the realm of possibility, and it showed in her work.
Does she influence my work? Not until recently when, bored with laborious attempts to write “literary” fiction, I gave science fiction a try with one of my stories. In the end, it turned out to be fantasy instead because, like those damn coloring books in my childhood, I refused to stay in the lines. But it felt great to unleash my imagination and ride it out to the end. It was actually the most fun I had with a story in a long time. And like all first drafts, it needs a hell of a lot of work for me to even think about submitting it for publication. Still, since then, I’ve been contemplating writing more stories like that. There is a hint of ambivalence about it and here’s where Butler may truly influence my direction.
No one can convince me that, simply because she wrote science fiction, Octavia Butler wasn’t a literary writer. She had a mastery of subtext, of allegory, the ability to infuse Race into her work without heavy-handed metaphors and imagery; Butler discussed the crippling effects of institutionalized racism, slavery and its long-standing after-burn within the Diaspora, the world in whole, in ways few “literary” writers could emulate, let alone surpass.
None of this was immediately evident to me. That is, I saw the subtext but it took a number of years, maybe until this year, for me to associate Butler’s skill with my attempts to write well, with literature in general, and conclude that one can truly enjoy their art, contribute to a larger social discussion and still establish oneself as a literary writer. Or, to take it one step further, remove the “literary” tag as an end goal because, really, one tries to be “literary” when they want to be seen as part of the intelligentsia.
Admittedly, this has been my biggest problem this year. Whereas, in reality, it’s the other way around. Just write. Write well. Respect the craft. Read. Research. And be honest with who you are and what you believe to be true. There’s a difference between wanting to be “literary” and wanting to write literature. The former is a bullsh*t label to separate genre from “non-genre” writers. The latter is striving to write great, lasting stories, independent if people fly in your worlds or not. So yes, Octavia Butler wrote literature and she did it her way. As an black writer, I’ll struggle to find a lesson more useful to my development than that.
