New biography shows how Octavia Butler deserved better early in her career

December 15, 2025 / 9:04 am

caption: The KUOW Book Club is reading "Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler" by Susana M. Morris in December 2025.

The KUOW Book Club is reading "Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler" by Susana M. Morris this month. I'm your reading guide Katie Campbell. Let's get into the first half of the book and Octavia Butler's early career.

f I could have a superpower, I've decided I'd want something a little niche. I'd want the power to read minds, specifically the minds of those who underestimated the work of people we now know to be brilliant. I want to see them experience that moment when they say to themselves, "Crud. I could've been part of something amazing."

Did the publishers who rejected Octavia Butler's early work regret those decisions eventually? Did Doubleday ever realize they'd severely underpaid her when the publisher forked over just $1,500 for her first novel, "Patternmaster," in 1975? Did her bullies ever become her fans?

Passages like this from Susana M. Morris' biography of Butler were heart-wrenching as a fan:

Often Octavia was a happy hermit, researching and writing. At other times isolation, alternately experienced personally, professionally, and socially, weighed heavily on her. From her teens and well into her thirties she intermittently struggled with thoughts of suicide. Social anxiety, economic precarity, health issues stemming from years of working for little or nothing, and just plain old loneliness dotted years that were also marked by the publication of novels and short stories and even increasing recognition from her science fiction peers. POSITIVE OBSESSION, PAGE 103

Morris' biography of Butler details these struggles alongside Butler's successes, painting a detailed portrait of the woman who truly was positively obsessed with her craft.

Of course, Butler went on to become an award-winning author and a pioneer in science fiction as a Black woman before she died in her Lake Forest Park home in 2008; she was 58 years old. She's now celebrated as the mother of Afrofuturism, which centers Black characters and culture in a genre that has been historically dominated by white men. That was a reality Butler lived in, one in which her science fiction peers were most often white men who wrote familiar, comfortable content for other white men.

Butler took science fiction to new heights. Her work reflected on questions like, as Morris put it on page 39, "what America's imperialist designs both on Earth and in space symbolized for the future of humanity and what lessons marginalized groups — such as Black people in the United States — have learned from their oppressors."

But as with other trailblazers, Butler's willingness to challenge the status quo meant she was always under scrutiny, as Morris explained:

She was the singular Black woman in the genre and was very aware of her status. Although during interviews Octavia could downplay her experiences of racism and sexism, her dissemblance was self-protective. She understood that, fairly or not, she was an ambassador who represented both her race and gender. In 1978 she reflected: "I am a dancing bear, a novelty, a black woman who writes successfully. I must be able to prevail whether blacks in general are in or out of fashion. That means I must always speak well and have something interesting to say. I must become a good storyteller — reach people on a level beyond color." At times, Octavia reminded herself that she must use standard English and avoid any slang, because in her mind, "As SF's [science fiction's] solitary black woman writer, I must relax in good English or be misunderstood." POSITIVE OBSESSION, PAGE 104

Butler's work to ensure she was understood showed up in other, powerful ways, as detailed by Morris. Her most successful book, "Kindred," is about a Black woman in 1976 who suddenly travels back in time to the antebellum south. The woman, Dana, is called back to save a young white boy's life. The boy, Rufus, is the son of slavers, and Dana eventually learns that he is her ancestor — because he raped a Black woman, Dana's foremother Alice. Dana is called back to her own time when her life is threatened, but she returns to the past often, as Rufus is prone to getting himself into deadly situations.

The dynamic is strange for Dana, to say the absolute least. She must save Rufus' life time and again because her very existence depends on it, but that means living under slavery for periods of time, suffering at the hands of Rufus and his ilk, and "braving a crucible created by powerful, craven people," as Morris wrote on page 77.

With "Kindred," Morris explained, Butler sought to dispel any ideas that the people who lived under slavery were anything less than heroic:

"Kindred" challenges the notion that Black people in the antebellum era and the decades right after slavery were weak or cowardly. ... There is no triumphant battle scene where the enslaved bear arms and cut down their enslavers. Instead, there are small moments of laughter in the kitchen when Dana helps the women cook. There are snatches of storytelling in the slave cabins after dark. Dana sees Black people fall in love and create families and mourn when their people die or are sold away. ... Octavia was not rejecting the role of revolution or rebellion, but rather emphasizing the strength and courage it took for individuals to survive outside of those kinds of large-scale movements. ... "I wanted to reach people emotionally in a way that history tends not to." Positive OBSESSION, PAGES 80-81

Readers who have been with the KUOW Book Club for a time will be familiar with Butler's poignant style, especially when it comes to race and racism. We read her last novel, "Fledgling," in September 2024. And while it's entirely different from "Kindred" — with a Black vampire as its protagonist — Butler continued to reflect on the themes that occupied her in Dana's story.

She wrote about social justice and equity and the perils of oppression, for both the oppressed and the oppressors in the long run. She centered the Black experience, especially Black women, with love and nuance. And she challenged her readers to see their own reality reflected in her stories.

Morris quoted Butler's essay, for which this book is named, "Positive Obsession," in which she "asserts the significance of science fiction for Black people":

What good is any form of literature to Black people? What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking — whoever "everyone" happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people? POSITIVE OBSESSION, PAGE 86

Ponder these questions are we wrap up Morris' work this month. Think about the intention Butler brought to these conversations as you reunite with family during the holidays. And for goodness sake, read a book.

Come back to kuow.org/books on Dec. 29 for my interview with Susana M. Morris, author of "Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler."

Why you can trust KUOW

Katie Campbell
Online Editor/Reporter

Katie joined KUOW's online team as an editor and reporter in 2024, after serving three years as senior producer of the local Morning Edition program. She has covered a variety of local topics, including the Seattle City Council, elections, and breaking news. She also brings readers some levity with a weekly news quiz.
More stories from Katie Campbell »