Butler believed that humans crave dominance. I was a young, idealistic Pan-Africanist and feminist who believed that Black liberation could be achieved by dismantling patriarchy and white supremacy. The idea that human beings are hierarchical permeates Butler’s work, and it’s what she tried to explain to me during an in-depth conversation at a party in Seattle. Butler simply paid close attention to human behavior. She was a lover of science, an inquisitive writer, and a keen observer of society. While Butler’s novels are certainly cautionary tales, she was not a fortune teller. Having grown up with a healthy diet of science-fiction movies and TV shows as a child of the ‘80s, reading about Black girls and women in the future was validating. I, like many others, became a fan long before the T-shirts and the Butler-tried-to-tell-us social media posts. Butler had attended a Clarion workshop 30 years prior as a student, but now she was back to teach eager pupils like me. Back in 2001, I was an aspiring writer attending the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in Seattle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |