{"id":72073,"date":"2025-08-10T09:57:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72073\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T09:57:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:57:18","slug":"why-the-internet-is-still-obsessed-with-octavia-e-butler-decades-after-her-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72073\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the internet is still obsessed with Octavia E. Butler, decades after her death"},"content":{"rendered":"

For pioneering science fiction novelist Octavia E. Butler, writing was more than a profession. It was a form of survival, resistance and reflection. In \u201cPositive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler,\u201d author and college professor Susana M. Morris shares the quiet yet radical story of Butler\u2019s life, revealing how the worlds she imagined were shaped by the one that often shut her out.<\/p>\n

Going from a shy Black girl, born in 1947 and raised under Jim Crow, to a literary icon, Butler\u2019s path to success was not linear. She was told not to dream but to get a \u201creal\u201d job. As she juggled temp jobs, financial anxiety and a society that resisted making room for her, Butler wrote genre-defining literature that has been adapted for TV and film in recent years, and has continued to go viral nearly two decades after her death in 2006 at 58.<\/p>\n

\u201cPositive Obsession,\u201d named for a 1989 essay by Butler, pulls from journals, interviews and personal letters in Butler\u2019s public archives to illuminate the forces that shaped her, revealing an ambitious and meticulous writer.<\/p>\n

\"SusanaSusana M. Morris.Chrissandra Jallah<\/p>\n

For most of her career, Butler woke up before dawn to write for hours ahead of what she once called \u201clots of horrible little jobs.\u201d As she toiled in factories and warehouses, washing dishes, inspecting potato chips and making telemarketing calls, Butler conjured characters from her everyday encounters.<\/p>\n

Morris told NBC that in sharing Butler\u2019s story now, 19 years after her death, she hopes to inspire artists who don\u2019t think they can afford to create to find the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this economic system that we\u2019re currently in, we are so crunched down trying to buy eggs or pay the rent,\u201d Morris said \u201csometimes we don\u2019t even feel like we can access art for art\u2019s sake. But through all the trials and tribulations, she was accessing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler\u2019s journals show how writing was her way of pushing back against racism, patriarchy and other norms that frustrated her and made her feel overlooked as a creative person and a public intellectual. She wrote because \u201cshe had to,\u201d Morris writes. She put pen to paper to make sense of the world and speak back to it.<\/p>\n

Beyond writing novels, Butler eventually became known for her direct and evocative engagement with readers, whom she pushed to think deeply about the world around them. She analyzed real-world dynamics and extrapolated them into prescient and cautionary fiction. She wrote stories that seem to have become only more popular as time has passed. Her novel \u201cKindred\u201d was reimagined into a TV series in 2022, and authors John Jennings and Damian Duffy won a Hugo Award in 2021 for their graphic novel reimagining of her book \u201cParable of the Sower.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Positive\u201cPositive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.\u201d<\/p>\n

On social media, the \u201c#OctaviaKnew\u201d trend captures the ominous ways her words resonate in the present on issues like climate change, inequality and politics. Her ability, decades ago, to conjure how we live now gives Morris\u2019 students a feeling of connection to Butler\u2019s work today.<\/p>\n

In \u201cParable of the Talents,\u201d published in 1998 and set in the 2020s, Butler introduces a conservative presidential candidate who urges voters to join him in a project to \u201cmake America great again.\u201d The words on the page reverberated through Morris\u2019 classroom as she taught the book during Trump\u2019s first presidency. It\u2019s why many readers think Butler\u2019s work was nearly prophetic. \u201cPsychic? Maybe not,\u201d Morris says. \u201cPrescient? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris uses the 1987 short story \u201cThe Evening and the Morning and the Night\u201d \u2014 about a community grappling with a fictional genetic disorder \u2014 to talk to students about the marginalization of people with disabilities. <\/p>\n

Butler\u2019s 1984 short story \u201cBloodchild\u201d pushes readers to rethink gender, reproduction and family. \u201cWe\u2019re living in a moment that demonizes transness,\u201d Morris said. \u201cBut in \u2018Bloodchild,\u2019 men carry the babies. It complicates our idea of what bodies are supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler\u2019s fiction never floated away from reality. It confronted it. And it continues to make readers question what they thought they understood. Though often shelved as science fiction, Morris says Butler\u2019s work transcends the label, and she instead classifies it as \u201cspeculative fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris\u2019 immersive portrait can at times feel like reading Butler\u2019s journal or listening to the innermost thoughts of a quiet and sometimes lonely person.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe lived a life of the mind,\u201d Morris said. Out of that life came work shaped by discipline, imagination and a kind of beautiful obsession \u2014 one that Morris hopes others might mirror in their own lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that in this world that is often devoid of beauty,\u201d Morris said, \u201cthat other folks can see her example and find the beauty in their own kind of practice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For pioneering science fiction novelist Octavia E. Butler, writing was more than a profession. It was a form…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":{"0":"post-72073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}