LALa

“When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the questions I heard most often was, "What good is science fiction to Black people?" I was usually asked this by a Black person...

What good is any form of literature to Black people?

What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking -- whoever "everyone" happens to be this year.

And what good is all this to Black people?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories

“Read. Always read. No one can take that away from you.”
― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?”
― Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way