The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

In Morris’ new biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, she tries to answer that question, tracing Butler’s life from the young introvert sometimes ​“described as a kind of misanthrope who preferred her own company” to her posthumous legacy as a literary mastermind whose oeuvre has become a centerpiece of Black liberation. For Morris, the biography also works as a dedication to Blackness and an opportunity to understand her own existence as a Black queer woman in the United States.

We learn about Butler’s writing from childhood in postwar Pasadena, Calif., through the Black Power movement and the Reagan Administration and into her last moments, at age 58 in 2006, shadowed by the Iraq War and war on terror. Butler’s early awareness of power structures shifted her mindset into one that wondered whether ​“those who didn’t have much power — could empower themselves and others and change the world.” Morris describes how many adults attempted to discourage a young Butler from pursuing a writing career, and how she became known as a ​“news junkie” as early as age 13, fed by the 1960 election of President John F. Kennedy.

Details from Butler’s upbringing manifest throughout her frequently dystopian work, which ​“routinely envisioned futures with Black women at the center, changing the course of human life and culture.” A 1951 fire that burned her grandmother’s house is a mirror to the drug addicted ​“pyros” who enjoy lighting and watching fires that consume neighborhoods in Parable of the Sower. In Kindred, a slave narrative that incorporates time travel, Butler hints at her mother’s upbringing on a Southern plantation, asking us to reassess the legacy of American slavery. Wild Seed, an ​“unapologetically weird” novel and the fourth in the Patternist series, asks what it means to be human, while Kindred and her other novels speak to a mother and feminine Black existence, one that could hold the ​“fate of humanity” within it.

In the pantheon of literary icons, Positive Obsession places Butler alongside a museum of literary icons including Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, writers who, like Butler, took on ​“patriarchy, white supremacy and other structures of power in dynamic ways that centered Black women’s experiences and intellectual contributions.” The title comes from an article Butler wrote for Essence in 1989: ​“I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time, nearly all professional science fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.” What’s special about the book is how closely it sits with Butler in the throes of her obsession, as she clanks away at her Remington typewriter during time snatched from jobs in factories and laundries. In the 1971 short story ​“Crossover,” she writes about a woman who is brought to the ​“brink of insanity” as she works in a factory. New admirers of Butler’s work might otherwise struggle to imagine the Butler who faced rejection letters and once pawned her typewriter to pay bills before catching her big break years later.

As an introvert and avid reader, Butler’s young mind became a dreamscape. Other inspirations include, for example, her local library and grocery-store science fiction magazines. We learn the telepathic humans from the Patternist series, for example, were influenced by Zenna Henderson’s 1961 novel Pilgrimage, which featured similar ​“strong women characters” and an alien telepathic force that spoke up about their unique struggles.

We also get notes from Butler’s journals and diaries, which Butler sometimes wrote in Spanish or code to speak freely. They frequently share Butler’s early interest in utopian societies, as she wondered whether socialist or communist models could come to fruition as people ​“will not live together without taking advantage of each other if they possibly can. They will not stop considering themselves better because their skin is light.” The same journals reveal how Butler was known by Estelle, her middle name, in childhood, since she and her mother share the name Octavia, and how she grappled with the ​“weight of poverty, isolation and frustration” early in her career. Morris shows how Butler’s early financial struggles led her to publish the book Survivor. Despite being a commentary on settler colonialism, Butler reveals that she regretted hastily accepting editors’ changes and publishing something that felt, to her, like bad writing.

Positive Obsession eloquently tells the story of Octavia, the trailblazer who ​“simply wanted to write the kinds of work she wanted to read.” And, for Morris, it works as an opportunity to reconnect with that young teenager, first encountering a Black girl hero in a book.