HSU Book of the Year

Need 1 more unit?  Love to read and talk about books?  Register for CRN #43725  and join campus book lovers to read the HSU/CR choice for Book of the Year in a Book Club format.  You will participate in small discussion groups, presentations, special events, FESCUE 2008, and the Fall, 2008 Dialogue on Race.  Attend mandatory initial class meeting on either Wed., Aug 27 or Thurs., Aug 28 from 6-8 PM in FH 235.  Additional meetings to be arranged.  If you have questions, email Erin Sullivan at ems6@humboldt.edu.

From Professor Janet Winston (English)
Here are titles and links to some useful essays, interviews, and tributes and obituaries.
Several of the interviews are audio- and/or visually-archived, so instructors can play these in class:
Octavia Butler’s website:
http://www.sfwa.org/members/Butler/ This contains numerous links to interviews, photographs, tributes to her and
obituaries after her passing. Teachers might find the links to audiotaped
interviews with Butler especially useful for the classroom.
Here are two interviews on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010830.octaviabutler.html
http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010830.octaviabutleressay.html
“Devil Girl From Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction” (transcript of speech
Butler gave at MIT in 1998)
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/forums/octaviabutler.html

**Videotaped interview of Butler on Democracy Now (2005)
http://www.archive.org/details/dn2005-1111_vid
She talks about global warming and reads from Parable of the Talents (the sequel to Parable of the Sower)

Scholarly essays and interviews:
“The Relationship Between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia Butler’s
Parable of the Sower” by Clara Escoda Agusti
Extrapolation 46.3 (2005): 351-59

“‘The More Things Change, The More They Remain the Same’: Gender and
Sexuality in Octavia Butler’s Oeuvre” by Sharon DeGraw in Femspec 4.2, 219-

“An Interview With Octavia Butler” by Randall Kenan
in Callaloo 14.2 (Spring, 1991): 495-504

“‘Radio Imagination’: Octavia Butler on the Poetics of Narrative Embodiment”
by Marilyn Mehaffy and AnaLouise Keating
in MELUS 26.1 (Spring 2001):45-76

“‘All that you touch you change’: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change
in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents
By Patricia Melzer in Femspec 3.2 (Jun 2002): 31-

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER AS RENDERED BY OCTAVIA BUTLER: LESSONS FOR OUR
CHANGING TIMES by Sandra Govan
In Femspec 4.2 (Jun 2003): 239-

From Barbara Curiel, HSU English and Ethnic Studies:
Lauren, the protagonist, is strongly patterned on Sojourner Truth. They both travel and rescue people who are enslaved, literally and in other ways. The parallels between Lauren and Truth can be studied by introducing historical materials about Truth, including their mutual interest in utopian societies, cross-dressing, and carrying weapons.
June Jordan has a poem “The Song of Sojourner Truth,” that can be studied with the novel.

From Christine Accomando, Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at HSU, more resources on Sojourner Truth:

I think the best work on Truth is Stetson and David’s GLORYING IN TRIBULATION: THE LIFEWORK OF SOJOURNER TRUTH. HSU Library Info

Her oratory is really interesting but always transcribed by others (since
unlike Lauren, she is an activist/orator but not a writer), so it’s
important to be conscious about what versions of speeches you use.

Sweet Honey in the Rock recorded a version of Truth’s Battle Hymn, a song
she composed for the African American soldiers in the Civil War.

Obituaries are one good source of information for authors once they are deceased. Parable author Octavia Butler died February 24, 2006 in Seattle, from injuries sustained in a fall. Here are some examples from among the many tributes published at the time of her death:

New York Times Obituary published on March 1, 2006:

Octavia Butler, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 58

From a hometown paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, on February 27, 2006:

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain

She was recognized in the Washington Post:

Octavia Butler, Lonely Bright Star of the Sci-Fi Universe

Humboldt State University and the College of the Redwoods have chosen Octavia Butler’s futuristic Parable of the Sower for common reading and discussion. Themes of dystopia/utopia, social and economic problems, climate change, and heroic journey combine in this rich novel. From Barnes & Noble:

“The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of ‘Paints,’ people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman, sets off on foot, moving north along the dangerous coastal highways. She is a ’sharer,’ one who suffers from a hereditary trait called ‘hyperempathy,’ which causes her to feel others’ pain as well as her own. Parable of the Sower is both a coming of age novel and a road novel, set in the near future, when the dying embers of our old civilization can either cool or be the catalyst for something new.”

From the Times-Standard, March 28, 2008 -

HSU and CR Pick “Book of the Year”