POSITIVE OBSESSION: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, by Susana M. Morris
Lovers of Black science fiction have long regarded Octavia E. Butler as the genre’s quintessential paradox. She was quiet yet fiercely present, solitary yet profoundly connected to the worlds she imagined. A tall, painfully shy Black woman who wrote in a genre dominated by white men, Butler might easily be mis-characterized as an anomaly. Susana M. Morris’s “Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler” helps us avoid this error by revealing the ways Butler, through her fiction, was a luminary in the genre, meaningfully attuned to the struggles of many.
A year ago, Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower” was everywhere. Published in 1993 but set in 2024, this first book in the Parable series presciently predicted a future California ravaged by climate crisis, economic inequality that leaves the poor more vulnerable than ever and social instability made worse by a polarizing political figure who is as ruinous as he is alluring. Sound familiar? In classrooms and book clubs, on social media and beyond, readers turned to Butler to understand an unraveling world. These readers can now turn to “Positive Obsession” to understand the forces that shaped her voice — her life as a young writer, her discipline and determination, and her belief in literature’s transformative potential.
In 1975, a year before her first book, “Patternmaster,” published, Butler wrote an affirmation in her journal: “I am a best selling writer. I write best selling books and excellent short stories.” It’s just one of many entries she wrote throughout the years asserting her unwavering drive to be a successful writer no matter what. One of the most valuable contributions of “Positive Obsession” is its insight into what that determination entailed.
Morris, an English professor with a well-earned reputation for her study of speculative literature and race, reveals that Butler wrote while living in poverty. She wrote while grappling with profound feelings of loneliness. She wrote while confronting a series of personal losses. Butler wrote to think and understand, to try to make sense of the contradiction between human intelligence and humanity’s instinct to blindly commit to hierarchies. (Butler said her Xenogenesis novels, which tell the story of what’s left of humanity after a nuclear apocalypse, were inspired by her quest to understand how humans somehow believed Ronald Reagan’s claims that a nuclear war could be both “limited” and “winnable.”) Butler turned to science fiction as a salve, because she believed it was the genre most capable of the radical rethinking necessary for humanity to survive.
One of the biography’s most compelling themes is Butler’s sustained critique of American imperialism. From the scorched landscapes in “Parable of the Sower” to the uneasy alliances between humans and the Oankali (an “alien” race in the Xenogenesis series) to the entanglement of history and power in “Kindred,” Butler’s fiction exposes the toll of empire (and its illusion of progress) on the body, on the planet and on humanity.
Drawing mainly from interviews and Butler’s voluminous notes, Morris creates a rounded portrait of a working writer whose unrelenting discipline was complicated by her self-doubts, her financial instability and her obsession with the craft of writing. It’s a portrayal that helps illuminate the real person behind the mythic figure of our imaginations.
“Positive Obsession” does not unfold chronologically: It moves fluidly between Butler’s novels and the moments that shaped them. Morris opts for a critical lens over a more conventional approach. In this sense, Butler’s fiction becomes the map we use to trace the contours of her life. Weaving together close readings and key episodes in Butler’s personal history, Morris convincingly suggests that Butler’s fiction offers the clearest insight into her life and worldview.
Butler never lost sight of the fact that she did not resemble what people assumed was the future of science fiction — not when she began writing nor for many years thereafter. Yet now, nearly 20 years after her death, we are unable to imagine science fiction without her. This biography could not be more timely. Those of us familiar with Butler’s work will feel the chill of recognition once more as Morris reintroduces her to us and reminds us to heed the novelist’s warnings. New readers are beckoned to witness the depth of Butler’s mind and to follow the blueprints she left that point us toward more liberated futures.
“Positive Obsession” reissues Butler’s clarion call for us to join her in building a better world. Morris, in turn, delivers the invitation with the requisite care and clarity we need to see Butler’s enduring vision with fresh eyes and renewed resolve.
POSITIVE OBSESSION: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler | By Susana M. Morris | Amistad | 247 pp. | $29.99
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