Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview
Octavia Butler (1947-2006) was acclaimed as the first Black female science-fiction author. By the 1960s the genre that began as a boy’s club had begun to admit more women, but if a Black woman had ever published in the field before Butler, her name has been lost.
The Last Interview collects her discussions with journalists (including “Fresh Air’s” Terry Gross) from 199-2006. The novelty of a Black woman SF writer was such that interviewers often asked the same questions and Butler responded with similar answers. We learn that the public library was her rocket ship. She read SF voraciously as a child and drew on libraries for researching Kindred, her remarkable story of a contemporary Black woman who repeatedly lurches back in time to slavery days—and the white ancestor she must save if she hopes to ever be born.
The impression left by The Last Interview is of an indomitable woman who made her way through persistence and diligence. She wrote every day and didn’t wait for the muses to whisper in her ear.
