Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels and the “Boomerang” of African American History

Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels and the “Boomerang” of African American History Marlene D. Allen (bio) Science fiction and black culture are changing to embrace one another. Science fiction is a powerful figurative tool. . . . Its characteristics make it suited to addressing past and recent African-American experiences and confronting issues of the day. It is a significant distortion of the present. . . . It should be taught with attention to historical context. . . . It’s a tool for thinking about the here and now, and also for imagining alternatives—how the world might be different. —Jeffrey Tucker To Survive, Let the past Teach You —Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents As a first-year PhD student, I once delivered a paper at a conference sponsored by the College Language Association (CLA) featuring Octavia Butler as the keynote speaker. I was recruited to speak at the conference by one of my committee members because my master’s thesis analyzed two Butler novels, and while I was delighted by the idea that I would get to meet one of my literary heroines in person, I was also greatly frightened by the prospect of delivering a paper critiquing her work in front of Butler herself. I hoped she would not find my reading of her work erroneous or presumptuous, or, if she did, that she at least would be kind enough not to embarrass me in front of the audience. My anxiety about my presentation, I soon learned, was unnecessary; Butler listened intently to my speech and even responded to several ideas I brought up in my presentation. She sensitively took the tack of saying she wanted to expand upon some of the points I made in my talk instead of critiquing them. Grateful at her kindness to a young scholar such as myself, I rushed up to her after our panel session was over and asked her to autograph my copy of her novel Wild Seed, which she graciously consented to do. The simple yet provocative inscription she wrote in my book, “Best wishes, and teach!” still resonates with me to this day. As I ruminate over my encounter with Octavia Butler almost ten years later, and in light of Butler’s recent passing, I have come to the realization that what Octavia Butler wrote in my now cherished copy of Wild Seed greatly characterizes the overriding passion that flows throughout Butler’s science fiction and fantasy tales. For Butler uses her End Page 1353 tales to teach her readers important lessons about life, about human history, and about the many pitfalls that continually seem to ensnare the human species. Like her role as writer/teacher, Butler’s novels are filled with characters who write and teach others: from Dana Franklin in Kindred, who teaches the slaves on the Maryland plantation, some of whom are her ancestors, to read and write, even though she risks her very life (and the lives of the slaves) to do so; to Lauren Olamina, whose creates a religion, Earthseed, that is founded upon the principle of equal access to education in a futuristic society where only the wealthiest Americans are formally educated. Similar to Lauren and Dana in their fictional worlds, Butler herself functions as a teacher to our real world, and her specialty is history, in particular African American history. Butler insistently incorporates a readily identifiable African American history in her writings even in those texts that are set in the future or on other planets, using the creative possibilities of science fiction to portray African American history in new and highly original ways. Because it offers the writer limitless possibilities, science fiction is an important terrain for black writers like Octavia Butler and her fellow contemporary African American science fiction writers, including Samuel Delany, Walter Mosely, Steven Barnes, and Nalo Hopkinson, for these writers are able to interrogate “master” narratives of history as it has been passed down and also to question accepted scientific theories regarding race and gender in their respective writings. By using science fiction conventions such as time or interplanetary travel, encounters with alien beings, characters with psionic powers, and futuristic settings, Octavia Butler is able to imagine both fictional futures in which she...