Why the internet is still obsessed with Octavia E. Butler, decades after her death

For pioneering science fiction novelist Octavia E. Butler, writing was more than a profession. It was a form of survival, resistance and reflection. In “Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler,” author and college professor Susana M. Morris shares the quiet yet radical story of Butler’s life, revealing how the worlds she imagined were shaped by the one that often shut her out. Going from a shy Black girl, born in 1947 and raised under Jim Crow, to a literary icon, Butler’s path to success was not linear. She was told not to dream but to get a “real” job. As she juggled temp jobs, financial anxiety and a society that resisted making room for her, Butler wrote genre-defining literature that has