172 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
wake of changing conceptions of multiculturalism. How have civic discourses
about race changed over time? How has the 2008 election of the first black
president of the United States complicated your reading of the novel?- Butler’s protagonist loses her left arm on her last trip home. Philosopher Paul
Ricoeur suggests that “the past survives by leaving its trace.” If Dana’s dis-
memberment functions as a trace of memory, what does this dismemberment
signify? How might the loss of an arm encourage her to re-member herself
and the past, and to take control of her own agency? How might this loss
afford Dana a new and unique perspective on her history? How will her loss
contribute to Dana’s “re-memory,” making her past part of her present?
RESOURCES
Primary Works
Daniel Burton-Rose, “Reinventing Our Heroes,” LiP Magazine (Summer 2004)
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/octaviabutlerinterview_2004.pdf
[accessed 16 November 2009].
An interview covering hierarchy, relevancy of slave narratives, and various aspects
of several of Butler’s novels.
Randall Kenan, “An Interview with Octavia E. Butler,” Callaloo, 14, 2 (1991):
495–514.
Interview covering biographical and creative elements in Butler’s works.
Charles H. Rowell, “An Interview with Octavia E. Butler,” Callaloo, 20, 1 (1997):
47–66.
A lengthy interview covering biographical and creative elements related to
Butler’s works.
Criticism
Dorothy Allison, “The Future of Female: Octavia Butler’s Mother Lode,” in
Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, edited by Henry Louis
Gates Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1990), pp. 471–478.
Explores Butler’s construction of “femaleness.”
Robert Crossley, Introduction to Butler’s Kindred (Boston: Beacon, 1988).
A critical introduction later used as an afterword in the twenty-fifth anniversary
edition. Crossley provides an overview of the novel and its issues and places it in
a critical context.
Anne Donadey, “African American and Francophone Postcolonial Memory:
Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Assia Djebar’s La femme sans sépulture,” Research
in African Literatures, 39 (Fall 2008): 65–81.
Examines important elements in the work of both authors—the need to represent
the unspeakable and to resist historical amnesia.