Table Of ContentTHE BLOOMSBURY
HANDBOOK TO
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
In memoriam
Dr. Gregory Jerome Hampton
6 November 1968 – 29 November 2019
All that he touched, he changed.
THE BLOOMSBURY
HANDBOOK TO
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Edited by Gregory J. Hampton
and Kendra R. Parker
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2020
Copyright © Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker and contributors, 2020
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CONTENTS
List of iLLustrations viii
Contributors ix
foreword xiv
aCknowLedgments xxi
Introduction 1
Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker
PART ONE: DAWN
1 What Octavia E. Butler Feared Most about Human Nature 11
Steven Barnes
2 “I want to live forever and breed people!”: The Legacy of a Fantasy 15
Heather Thaxter
3 Interpreting Disability Metaphor and Race in Octavia
E. Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” 35
Sami Schalk
4 Problematizing Consent in the Posthuman Era: Octavia E. Butler’s
“Bloodchild” and “Amnesty” 55
Joe Heidenescher
vi CONTENTS
PART TWO: ADULTHOOD RITES
5 “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking”:
Tracing Vampirism in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy 73
Kendra R. Parker
6 Becoming Posthuman: The Sexualized, Racialized, and Naturalized
Others of Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood 95
Kitty Dunkley
7 Teaching the “Other” of Colonialism: The Mimic (Wo)Men of
Xenogenesis 117
Aparajita Nanda
8 Octavia E. Butler’s Discourse on Colonialism and Identity:
Dis/eased Identity in “Bloodchild,” Dawn, and Survivor 133
Gregory Jerome Hampton
PART THREE: IMAGO
9 Visualizing Dana and Transhistorical Time Travel on the
Covers of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred 151
Christine Montgomery and Ellen C. Caldwell
10 Apocalypse, Afrofutures, and Theories of “the Living”
beyond Human Rights: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable Series 181
Chriss Sneed
11 Trauma, Technology, and the Trickster: Reading Octavia
E. Butler’s Unfinished Trilogy 201
Ji Hyun Lee
12 The Pregnant Man Story: Echoes of Octavia E. Butler’s
Themes of Reproductive Anxiety in Fan Writing 221
Heather Osborne
13 A Space for Discomfort: Octavia E. Butler and the Pedagogy
of the Taboo 239
Aryn Bartley
CONTENTS vii
14 Finding the Superhero in Damian Duffy’s and John Jennings’s
Graphic Novel Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s
Science-Fiction-Postmodern-Slave-Narrative, Kindred 259
Forrest Yerman
afterword 274
Tananarive Due
index 281
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
9.1 First edition of Kindred (1979, Doubleday, hardback). Cover
art by Larry Schwinger; Custom font by Elizabeth Levine 153
9.2 First paperback edition of Kindred (1981, Pocket Books) 158
9.3 First release under Beacon’s new paperback line Bluestreak
(1998, Bluestreak, an imprint of Beacon Press). Cover design:
Stark Design; Cover photography: Jana Leon; Model: Chastity
Jackson 161
9.4 Two slightly varied versions of Kindred, twenty-fifth anniversary
paperback (2004, Bluestreak, an imprint of Beacon Press).
Cover design: Isaac Tobin; Cover art: Jana Leon; Model:
Chastity Jackson 163
9.5 (2003, Beacon Press with new Reader’s Guide, paperback).
Cover design and photo illustration: Bob Kosturko; Cover art:
Corbis (image of woman) and Library of Congress (image of
slave quarter) 167
9.6 (2018, Headline Book Publishing, paperback). Designs and
illustrations: Yeti Lambregts 171
CONTRIBUTORS
Steven Barnes is a New York Times best-selling author who has written more
than thirty science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. He is also a pioneering
science fiction television writer. His “Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer
Limits won an Emmy for star Amanda Plummer. The NAACP Image Award
winner also has written for “The New Twilight Zone,” “StarGate SG-1,”
and “Andromeda.” Octavia E. Butler called Barnes’s Endeavor Award-
winning novel Lion’s Blood “imaginative, well researched, well written,
and devastating.” He has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Cable
Ace awards. Barnes has lectured at UCLA, Mensa, Pasadena JPL, taught at
Seattle University, hosted the “Hour 25” radio show on KPFK, been Kung
Fu columnist for Black Belt magazine, been a “Starred Speaker” at the L.A.
Screenwriting Expo, and profiled in countless magazines, newspapers, radio
shows, and webzines.
Aryn Bartley teaches literature and writing at Lane Community College,
where she is also the Faculty Professional Development Coordinator. She
has published on human rights narratives, witnessing, and pedagogy. Her
current interests include the above topics along with feminist speculative
fiction and the health humanities.
Ellen C. Caldwell is an art historian, writer, and professor at Mt. San Antonio
College. She completed her master’s at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, with an emphasis on contemporary West African art and visual
culture. For the past decade, she has researched and written about visual
artist Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers), who explores colonial pasts
