I discovered that one of my favorite science fiction writers Octavia Butler has died.

I first heard about her in high school while randomly reading How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card (author of the classic Ender’s Game) He used a lot of examples of her writing.

I didn’t get around to reading Dawn (Xenogenesis) until I was in college, and I quickly ripped through it and into Adulthood Rites then to Imago. She was the first person-of-color science fiction writer I ever read, and looking back, I’m sure that reading that series impacted me greatly since, like many college students, at the time I was in the throes of trying to define my ethnic/cultural identity. Reading her books reinforced the notions I had learned from my A.P. U.S. History class (which also greatly affected my notions of this American Empire of ours—I feel like I’m one of the few people who actually learned about the Filipino-American War—not the Philippine Insurrection—in high school. It wasn’t just glossed over. We talked about it for one entire class period and went over the atrocities and treachery committed by the Americans and discussed the grotesquely racist nature of Manifest Destiny. That class was extraordinarily illuminating, but that is another story…) But the thing that her writing reinforced in me is the notion that the conflicts rooted in race, ethnicity, conquest, and imperialism are not at all simple things, and that, because of the polarizing nature of it, even people who are the same skin color and culture as you end up being not on your side. The Xenogenesis series really made me think about interracial cultures and thorny thicket of issues therein and the way trying to mend bridges ends up burning others. It also made me meditate on the fact that imperial conquest and colonization has already happened, slavery has already happened, ethnic cleansing has already happened. There is nothing we can do to undo these evils. We have to deal constructively with their consequences. We’re not going to do any good trying to fight hate with hate.

I can tell you that this is not a popular point of view as a person-of-color amongst other people-of-color who are also in the throes of figuring out their own cultural identities. Many of us were just coming to terms with how a lot of the ugly truths about America had been whitewashed by the elementary and secondary school systems. And some coped with it all by adopting ultra-nationalistic or ethnic-supremacist stances, reveling in quasi-nationalistic revisionist mythologies, and rejecting all things Western (read “white”) with utter contempt. This was especially apparent at an institution with an illustrious revolutionary history like U.C. Berkeley, particularly when extraordinarily anti-people-of-color legislation like Proposition 187 (which cut undocumented immigrants’ access to social services, health care, and public education) and Proposition 209 (which dismantled affirmative action) were coming to pass. (Looking back, I can’t help but wonder, what the hell was going on? I thought this was supposed to be California! Damn racist bastards!)

Still, like with Butler’s protagonists, attempts to deal constructively rather than destructively with race and ethnicity issues puts one in a position where you are really on no one’s side. I was very well aware of the fact that I wasn’t white, but I didn’t fit in with a lot of my brown brothers and sisters either.

I guess I still haven’t really ever come to terms with this issue. In some ways, this is because of my predilection for lingering in the periphery, but through the years I’ve really wandered far afield into a place where I don’t have a lot of peers who are people-of-color, or at least people-of-color who don’t fit into the model-minority stereotype.

But, yeah, this was somewhat of a snapshot of where I was in my life when I started reading Butler’s work.

Her role as a science-fiction writer who was a person of color, though, is inspiring and encouraging to me. Like a lot of the perceptual spaces I’ve tended to hang out, often just following my bliss, as it were, science-fiction is a place dominated by white men, and doesn’t really seem like somewhere that people-of-color typically aspire to. I can sympathize that this must be a lonely place. You don’t have a lot of sympathetic peers. So you end up having to be a pioneer, not for the sake of being a pioneer, but because you have to pursue the thing that you love.

I actually went to see her read at Midnight Special in Santa Monica a while ago (alas, the bookstore is also gone) but didn’t have the courage to go up to her and have her sign my copy of Adulthood Rites. Ah well.

Rest in peace, Ms. Butler.