Reading with Style discussion

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

After her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.

She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.

This is the beginning of Butler's entry at Wikipedia.

I think she is a favorite in the group among those of you who enjoy science fiction. While I am not a fan of that genre, each time I see one of you post a well-known title, I'm tempted. Perhaps one day.

What is it you like about her books and writing?

I'm going to jump in, even though - unfortunately for me - I've only read one of her novels so far. I have others on my TBR list, but I suspect they haven't risen to the top yet because I expect it to be intense.

I've read Kindred. It seems like it wasn't a season for reviews, so I didn't write one. However, I remember almost 3 years on, how INTENSE! this book was.

In a way, it's too bad that this novel (and probably her others) are classified as science fiction. On the other hand, that probably is what allowed them to published. Certainly in Kindred, Butler writes an unflinching novel about the enslavement of African Americans and it's 'trickle down' effect on a contemporary African American woman. Other writers probably would have resorted to characters 'remembering' events or passing on remembrances. Here Butler uses time travel to bring the whole story alive and all the more meaningful.

The one person I follow on GR reads quite a bit of science fiction and writes very thoughtful reviews. This is a snippet of his review:

"...Describing the slave life from the perspective of a time-travelling modern woman, Butler’s strong narrative prose is in high form for a low burden – to illustrate to contemporary readers the horrors of slavery and in this context to draw a comparison with life of our time, making the transition to the early 1800s all the more stark and evil in contrast.

Kindred is also an allegory for our modern times, still burdened by the wounds of slavery and a racial consciousness in our society that has scars that won’t heal. Butler shows us, though, that we as a nation and a people are bound, as kindred, between races and with a shared history."