On Octavia E. Butler
by Tananarive Due
Even for writers, words
can fail us. It has taken me twenty-four hours to find the words.
In speculative black
fiction, we are a very small family. Our matriarch has died.
Sunday morning, when a
magazine reporter sent me word that Octavia Butler had died, I didn’t want
to believe it. I saw nothing in the news nor on the Web. I called
Octavia’s home number and listened with a pounding heart as her phone
rang. Once. Twice. Three times. I delighted – for just a bare instant
– when the ringing stopped and I heard her voice.
On her answering machine.
Already distant, clearly a recording. But Octavia’s voice.
I stammered a message.
What to say? Are you alive or dead? “I’ve...heard something...and I
was hoping to speak to Octavia...” I stopped, nearly sobbing. In that
instant, I understood the futility of the act. We cannot call the dead on
the telephone.
I thought of the other
times I had called her – never enough, it turns out – when I tried to make
our conversations brief, never able to fight the certainty that I was
pulling her away from a stream of brilliant thoughts. Once, she
apologized for the loud music playing in the background. It turned out
that Octavia, like me, enjoyed listening to music while she wrote. How
many times did I hesitate to dial her number simply because I didn’t want
to disturb her?
I was introduced to the
works of Octavia E. Butler when a friend of mine, a writer and columnist
named Robert Vamosi, insisted I must read her. I read Kindred, her
time-travel story of a contemporary black woman who is periodically flung
back into the Antebellum slavery period, and I was floored. I often say
that between Alex Haley’s Roots, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and
Butler’s Kindred, we can come no closer to experiencing slavery,
and its legacy, in America.
I advise people to read
Kindred first, because it serves as such a wondrous bridge to
speculative fiction. After that, some readers will insist it should be
Wild Seed and the Patternist series. But I often suggest Parable
of the Sower. In it, Butler creates her own religion – a religion
that embraces change.
All that You touch You
Change.
(You touched us, Octavia)
All that you Change
Changes you.
(You had to know how much we loved you)
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
(It was inevitable that we would lose you)
God is Change.
****
I met Octavia in person in
1997, when Clark Atlanta University sponsored a conference entitled “The
African-American Fantastic Imagination: Explorations in Science Fiction,
Fantasy and Horror.” There, I also met a science fiction writer named
Steven Barnes, who would soon become my husband. Steve had known Octavia
for years. That conference at Clark was a remarkable family reunion.
At the time, I had
published only one novel, The Between. I floated on air as I was
asked to pose in a photo with such prolific writers as Octavia, Steve,
Jewelle Gomez and Samuel R. Delany. In 2000, visiting Octavia’s home
with Steve to interview her for a piece we wrote for American Visions
magazine, I was surprised to see that photo from Clark hanging on her
wall.
“My other family,” she
explained.
Octavia was well that
day. She would not be well in subsequent meetings.
She was fighting a cold
when I saw her in Seattle at the “Black to the Future” science fiction
conference in June of 2004, when she was happy to meet our new baby,
Jason, but she didn’t want to give him germs. She was sick again when I
saw her in New York for the Yari Yari Pamberi International Conference of
Literature by Women of African Ancestry in October that same year. I
cautioned her to be careful about too much travel. Subsequently, I have
learned that Octavia was far more ill than I knew. The New York Times
reported Monday that she could only walk a few steps without having to
stop to catch her breath.
Like most people, I cannot
say that I knew Octavia well. But in the too-brief time I knew her, I saw
many sides of her. Her fierce disappointment with mankind’s worse
habits. Her girlish side. Her goddess side. Her insecure side.
Last summer, Octavia asked
me to write a quote for her upcoming novel, Fledgling. I was on my
own deadlines, trying to juggle the jobs of new mother, novelist and
fledgling screenwriter, but I said YES. I was honored even to be
asked. Octavia sounded almost apologetic, as if the book embarrassed
her. She explained that her medication made it difficult to write. “I’m
sure it’s brilliant,” I assured her. (I don’t regret leaving too much
unsaid, at least).
This past Christmas, we
sent Octavia a photo of Jason on Santa’s lap and said we hoped she was
feeling better. Octavia could not have been feeling well when she sent
out her own cards this year, but hers were always among the first to
arrive. She wrote to us: Have a creative,
prosperous New Year down there in California where it’s WAY too warm.
I must call her soon, I
thought many times these past two months. I must call Octavia.
But what if she is
writing?
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