From then on the library was my second home.” She had an endless appetite for stories and frequently made up her own while sitting on her grandmother’s porch. She immediately took me to the library and got me a card. She recalled her mother, “looked surprised and happy.

Butler remembered accompanying her mother to work at wealthy homes in Pasadena and having to enter through the back door. Her mother, who only had three years of formal schooling, worked incredibly hard to make sure Butler had more opportunities and a better education than she had.īutler attended Pasadena public schools where, as a shy and frequently lonely student who struggled with dyslexia, she felt left behind. Her teachers interpreted her slower reading as an unwillingness to do the work rather than a sign of her struggles with dyslexia. When she was given books to read in school, she found them boring and unrelatable, and she begged her mother for a library card. Her father, who worked as a shoe shiner, died when she was seven and Butler was raised by her mother who worked as a maid and her grandmother. Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California in 1947. She grew up poor in a city that, while not segregated legally, was segregated in fact. Her books are now taught in schools and universities across the U.S. As one of the first African American and female science fiction writers, Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of injustice towards African Americans, global warming, women’s rights, and political disparity. Octavia Butler was a pioneering writer of science fiction.

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