Mind of My Mind

Octavia E. Butler is a seminal figure in Afrofuturism, a genre explored through literature, art, and music. Afrofuturism seeks to explore both the past and future of African culture on the continent and around the world as it pertains to imagining new potentials. At its core, Afrofuturism sees the union of political and social thought with various artforms: “Afrofuturism, more concretely, can be understood as a wide-ranging social, political and artistic movement that dares to imagine a world where African-descended peoples and their cultures play a central role in the creation of that world” (Bruce, Delan. “Afrofuturism: From the Past to the Living Present.” UCLA Magazine, 3 Sept. 2020).

Butler’s fiction was foundational to Afrofuturism before the term was even coined. Writing in the 1970s, she was part of a small cohort of Black speculative writers, including Samuel R. Delany, who challenged the overwhelmingly white and male-dominated science fiction landscape. Alongside her contemporaries in feminist science fiction—such as Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin—Butler helped open the genre to broader questions of race, gender, power, and social structure.

Butler is renowned for her work in the science fiction genre, with novels like Parable of the Sower and Kindred reaching wide audiences.