Attending an Author/Book Talk (2 pts)

 

On August 17, 2025, I attended an author talk at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, featuring Dr. Susana Morris and the launch of her biography of Octavia Butler, "Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia Butler." Engaged in conversation with her was our very own Holly Smith, the main steward of the Spelman College Archives. I really enjoyed learning about the life of the woman behind some of the most iconic novels within the Black literary tradition and speculative fiction in general. I resonated with Butler's feelings of isolation and unbelonging as a taller, darker-skinned, androgynous woman who sat on the margins of ideals of womanhood. Her working-class upbringing and her determination to carve out a space for herself within the white male-dominated landscape of science fiction are inspiring, to say the least. 

Dr. Morris also spent time talking about her experience with engaging Butler's archives, which are located at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. She entered into a relationship with Butler as a Black woman engaging with and excavating another Black woman's life. I really appreciated this aspect of the talk, as it is rare for biographers to engage their own positionality when studying the life of another. As a Black feminist scholar, Dr. Morris utilized a self-reflexive Black feminist archival practice to tell the story of Octavia Butler's life. I also appreciated her situating Butler within the larger Renaissance of Black women's writing that was occurring during that time. Although Butler was set apart because of the genres in which she wrote, similarly to her contemporaries, she engaged with Black womanhood in a way that was revolutionary to the national landscape. 

I left the talk not only excited to read the book, but with a much more humanized understanding of the person that Octavia Butler was. Her careful study of history and critical analysis of her present allowed her to create worlds while sometimes very different from our own, often shared many truths. Dr. Morris emphasized this as she addressed how many refer to Butler as an oracle due to her eerie ability to seemingly predict the future. I find myself wondering how she would react to the current world that we are living in, which greatly resembles the dystopias that she created. I have a much deeper appreciation for her life and work that will influence my engagement with the rest of her work. 

- Gabrielle Cassell