” Normally, her mother would have put her in her place, but that day she didn’t say anything. She just gave her daughter a quiet look.
When Butler was 28, she decided to stop living inside her head and meet some women. She worried most about how being in a relationship with a woman could impact her career. “Isn’t being Black and female stigma enough?” she wondered. “It could hurt me. However small I am, it could. If I keep low after coming out, is it fear or shame?” After great hesitation, she picked up the phone to call the Gay and Lesbian Center in L.A. to inquire about some of its upcoming meetups.
A story set in a dystopic near future in which a pandemic degrades people’s ability to communicate, “Speech Sounds” came out of a depressive period for Butler. It was the early ’80s, and she was languishing with a new novel, Her friend Phyllis was dying of multiple myeloma at the time, and every week, Butler would bring her a new chapter ofbook she was working on, to read. Butler’s Uncle Clarence had recently died, and another friend attempted suicide.
What if she were to graft this idea onto space-colonization narratives? Wouldn’t a planet reject humans like a body rejecting an organ transplant? What if, instead of enacting the same hostile-native scenario, interstellar colonists were afflicted by the environment and tiny bacteria? Humans would have to learn how to synergize and work with the planet, rather than carry on with their smash-and-grab attitude. This could be a series exploring different worlds and their peculiar challenges.
e_alexjung .NifMuhammad writes on an Octavia Butler journal entry that's riveting for how it upends any tradition of shame around a relentless desire for success
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