As she came into her own as a writer and learned to capitalize on her unique perspective as a black woman, Butler’s stories frequently became commentaries on hierarchy amidst different races and genders, featuring minorities and women in critical, powerful roles as a way to push back against common repression. The work of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and many other Civil Rights icons brought discussions of race, power, and hierarchy to the forefront of the nation’s attention and weighed heavily on Butler’s mind. Butler died suddenly of a stroke the following year at the young age of 58.īorn in 1947, Butler came of age in the Civil Rights era and the rise of the Black Power movement, both of which had a significant effect on her writing. In 2005, she was awarded a place in Chicago State University's International Black Writers Hall of Fame. MacArthur Foundation, the first science fiction author ever to receive the honor. In the 1990s, following the publication of Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, she was awarded almost $300,000 by the John D. Over the next five years she wrote her popular Xenogenesis trilogy of novels, which she researched in the Amazon jungle.
In 1984 Butler she won her first Hugo Award for her short story “Speech Sounds.” The next year, “Bloodchild” won another Hugo.
Distinguishing herself with her perspective, Butler began selling short stories and novels, and by the late 1970s was able to support herself with writing full-time. With the development of the Black Power Movement in the 19s as well as the national discussions about race and hierarchy at the time, Butler began writing more diverse characters and using her stories to critique existing power structures in gender, class, and ethnicity from her viewpoint of a black woman. Her stories during this period were written in the mode of prominent science fiction at the time, with classic white male characters and simple premises. During her college years, Butler continued to write prolifically but saw little success, working a variety of side jobs to keep herself afloat while maintaining a rigorous writing schedule. She started writing her own stories and convinced her mother to buy her a typewriter at the age of 10. To compensate, Butler spent much of her free time in a local public library reading novels and magazines, and it was during this time that she fell in love with writing and storytelling. As a child, Butler suffered from dyslexia and a crippling level of social anxiety, making her childhood both lonely and fraught with teasing. Her mother was a housemaid and her father a shoeshine man, though he died when she was 7. Octavia Butler was the only child in a modest African-American family.
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