Octavia E. Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena California. When she was younger, she was known as Junie because her mother and she had the exact same name. Her father was a shoeshine man until he past away. Her mother had to raise her on her own.
She was dyslexic, but that never stopped her from her from chasing her dreams. She loved reading books and she started to create her own stories. At the age of 10, she knew she wanted to be an author. “She went to Pasadena Community College to get an Associate of Art degree in 1968. Then she went attended California State University in Los Angeles. In 1969 and 1970 she studied at the Screenwriter’s Guild Open Door Program and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop, where she took a class with science fiction master Harlan Ellison. That is why she started to write about science fiction stories.” ( )
Later in her career, of writing, she was known as the African American who wrote about the realm of science fiction. The reason that Octavia choose to write about science fiction was to be able to address the concern of humanity. Her books also
…show more content…
In 1995 Ms. Butler was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, she was the first science fiction writer to be so honored. That money she won from the award gave her enough money to offer a house for her and her mother. But her achievements didn’t stop there, she also received “two Hugo Awards from the World Science Fiction Society and two Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America” ( ) On February 24, 2006, Octavia E. Butler died in Seattle at her house, she was only 58 years old. With her death, the literary world lost one of its great storytellers. But she will always be remembered as the author who show people what the world was really
One famous quote from Barbara Jordan is “If you’re going to play a game properly, you’d better know every rule .” Barbara Jordan was an amazing woman. She was the first African American Texas state senator. Jordan was also a debater, a public speaker, a lawyer, and a politician. Barbara Jordan was a woman who always wanted things to be better for African Americans and for all United States citizens. “When Barbara Jordan speaks,” said Congressman William L.Clay, “people hear a voice so powerful so, awesome...that it cannot be ignored and will not be silenced.”
Alice Cogswell was an incredible little girl from the 1800s who helped to change the course of history for deaf people everywhere. Alice was one of the first and most prominent figures in the creation of ASL as well as an education system for American deaf people. She became this brave pioneer at only 9 years old.
Sharon Creech’s childhood memories, college experiences, and creative brain significantly affected her writings. She rarely thought of being an author growing up, but as time progressed, she began to really think about it. Creech first became interested when she entered college and something sparked her career. She wrote multiple books with her much thought and creativeness leading her to an outstanding writing career.
Sojourner Truth, originally named, Isabella Baumfree, was born, between the years 1797. She was the daughter of James and Betsey, slaves of one Colonel Ardinburgh, Hurley, Ulster County, New York.
She was a writer who suffered from Lupus. Her father died of the same illness when she was thirteen. Her Catholic beliefs reflected in her work, as well as the implementation of violence and darkness ironically used in her short stories. The titles in the stories give the readers an idea that the stories are the opposite of what the titles really state. She uses metaphors and similes to describe the characters and the settings of the stories. Each story relates to the darkness of the characters: people with racial prejudice, ignorance, and evil. Each story ends in a tragedy. The use of irony allows her to transport a meaning to each story that is not easy for readers to understand.
At that time, Viola Desmond was the one of the only successful black canadian business woman and beautician in Halifax because there are were very few careers offered to the black. She Attended Bloomfield High school and also, studied in a program from Field Beauty Culture School, located in Montreal. These schools were one of the only academies that accepted black students. After she graduated, she promoted and sold her products because she wanted expanded her business;she also sold many of her products to her graduates. In addition, she opened a VI’s studio of beauty culture in Halifax.
The majority of published literature in the US derived from the Vietnam War primarily has a base focus on effects the war experience had on Americans, and on the American culture and psyche. However, Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning, "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain," as well as many other critically acclaimed publications has been recognized for "breaking the mold" of traditional war writers by constructing his narratives in the first person voices of the Vietnamese. In order for an American write to compose stories through the perspective of individuals from a culture considered so foreign from our own he would have to have accumulated a significant amount of experience and knowledge for his works to be considered legitimate. Butler himself is well versed in the Vietnamese language, has voluntarily participated in the Vietnam War as a translator, and has taught in a predominately Vietnamese American area. The question at hand is; do these facts alone allow his stories to be admissible as authentic works?
At the age of 7, Maya Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The boyfriend turned up dead later by hand of her uncle. Traumatized by what had happened, she thought her words had killed her rapist so she became mute so her words couldn’t harm anyone else. "Angelou maintained nearly complete silence for five years,"(Author Study: M. Angelou). She moved to Arkansas where she continued to stay mute. “During these years, she retreated to a sheltered world of writing in which her creative being spawned and flourished” (Gaines 1). She started to dig her head into the books and that is known to be the beginning of her writing. “She read black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe”(Maya Angelou).
Walker grew up attending segregated schools, first East Putnam Consolidated, and then Butler Baker High School, where she graduated in 1961 as Valedictorian of her class. She then attended Atlanta’s Spelman College, a college for black women, on a scholarship. In 1963, she was awarded another scholarship and transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She later became pregnant in 1964, which again made Walker suicidal. She turned to her writing, and ultimately ended the pregnancy. After all the commotion, and problems Walker wrote her first published story, “To Hell with Dying” (1965) she later graduated Sarah Lawrence in 1965.
Civil rights activist, Daisy Bates was at the core of the school desegregation catastrophe in Little Rock, Arkansas in September 1957. Bates used her position as president of a local Arkansas branch of the NAACP to strategically destroy the segregated school system. Her civil rights work involved changing the policies of the Arkansas Public School System that promoted segregation of school students, which in turn denied equality of educational resources and qualitative instruction to Arkansas’ Negro students. This fight for civil rights for students of color caused a fundamental shift in how the state educated its students both Black and White. Her plan halted the nation to expose the segregation in the Arkansas school district. Bates advocated for Black children to attend public schools that had been segregated arguing that the school system needed to be desegregated. As a result of argument, Bates became the mentor to nine African-American students, who enrolled in
...ketches. All of these books represent events in her life that were crucial for her writing career. Her life became a success from the popularity of Little Women, which helped her provide for her impoverished family.
Influences on Society Page 16. Footnotes Page 17. Bibliography A BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH OCTAVIA E. BUTLER 1. Who is Octavia E. Butler? Where is she headed?
Gwendolyn Brooks once said “I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it, and experiencing the challenge”. For some, writing may not be enjoyable or easy, but for Brooks writing was her life. Gwendolyn Brooks not only won countless awards, but also influenced the lives of several African Americans.
One of which was her aunt, Harriet Beecher Stowe a famed novelist. This is when she began to love reading and all sorts of genres. One of her favorite would have been fiction because of her vivid imagination; however her mother would later forbid her to read fiction novels. That would change again because her mother would start reading those novels and would find themselves reading to each other. Because of her joy for reading, Charlotte was a very intellectual...
...t really catch the readers’ attention. Although she wasn’t writing in the major eras, she did write in the era where the style of writing was changing. This allowed her to be able to write freely and truly express herself through her words and illusions.