Video - Listen To Octavia Butler Give an Interview on DEMOCRACY NOW

>> This is Democracy Now, The Quarantine Report.

I'm Amy Goodman.

To mark Black History Month once again, as
well as the 25th anniversary of Democracy Now,

we turn now to one of the last
television interviews given

by the visionary black science
fiction writer, Octavia Butler.

In November 2005, she came into
Democracy Now's old firehouse studio.

Just three months later, Butler
died on February 24th, 2006,

after she fell outside her home
outside of Seattle, Washington.

She was 58 years old.

Butler was the first black woman to win the Hugo
and Nebula Awards for science fiction writing.

She was also the first science fiction writer
to receive a MacArthur Genius Fellowship.

Butler's best known books include the classics
Kindred, as well as Parable of the Sower,

and Parable of the Talents, two thirds
of a trilogy that was never finished.

Published in 1993, Parable of the Sower, set
in the 2020s in California, that's right,

the 2020s now in California, amidst
a global climate and economic crisis.

Octavia Butler described
them as cautionary tales.

>> They were what I call cautionary tales.

If we keep misbehaving ourselves, ignoring what
we've been ignoring, doing what we've been doing

to the environment, for instance, here's
what we're liable to wind up with.

>> In her books, Octavia Butler also
wrote about slavery, about fascism,

about religious fundamentalism,
and so much more.

Her work inspired a new generation
of black science fiction writers.

She's been called the mother of Afrofuturism.

And Octavia Butler's audience
has continued to grow.

In September, she made the New York Times
best seller list for the first time,

50 years after she began writing,
and nearly 15 years after her death.

Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez and I
interviewed Octavia Butler in November of 2005.

It was shortly after Hurricane
Katrina devastated New Orleans.

President George W. Bush, the former
governor of Texas, was in the White House,

overseeing the U.S. wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part of this interview aired live, but
some of it has never been broadcast before.

>> How did you first start
writing science fiction?

You grew up in Pasadena?

>> Mhmm.

>> How did you first become
attracted to that type of writing?

>> Oh, I think I loved it because, well, I
fell into writing it because I saw a bad movie,

a movie called Devil Girl from Mars.

And went into competition with it.

But I think I stayed with it
because it was so wide open.

It gave me the chance to comment
on every aspect of humanity.

People tend to think of science fiction
as, oh, Star Wars, or Star Trek.

And the truth is there are no closed
doors, and there are no required formulas.

You can, you can go anywhere with it.

>> We're talking to Octavia Butler.

Her latest book is Fledgling,
wrote the Parable series

as Katrina was happening,
in the aftermath of Katrina.

A lot of people were talking
about Octavia Butler

and how the Parable series
made them think about that.

Explain.

>> I wrote the two Parable
books back in the 90s.

And they are books about, as I said,
what happens, because we don't trouble

to correct some of the problems that
we're brewing for ourselves right now.

Global warming is one of those problems.

And I was aware of it back in the 80s.

I was reading books about it.

And a lot of people were seeing it
as politics, as something very iffy,

as something they could ignore because
nothing was going to come of it tomorrow.

That and the fact that, I think I was
paying a lot of attention to education,

because a lot of my friends are teachers.

And the politics of education
was getting scarier [inaudible].

We were getting to that point where we
were thinking more about the building

of prisons and of schools and libraries.

And I remember while I was working
on the novels, my hometown, Pasadena,

had a bond issue that they
passed to aid libraries.

And I was so happy that it passed,
because so often these things don't.

And they had closed a lot of branch
libraries and were able to reopen them.

So, not everybody was going
in the wrong direction.

But a lot of us, a lot of the country still was.

And what I wanted to write
was a novel of someone

who was coming up with solutions of the sort.

My main character's solution is, well, grows
from another religion that she comes up with.

Religion is everywhere.

There are no human societies without it.

Whether they acknowledge
it as a religion or not.

So, I thought religion might be an answer,
as well as, in some cases, a problem.

And in, for instance, Parable of the Sower
and Parable of the Talents, it's both.

So, I have people who are bringing
America to a kind of fascism,

because their religion is the only
one they're willing to tolerate.

On the other hand, I have people who are
saying, well, here is another religion,

and here are some verses that can
help us think in a different way.

And here is a destination that isn't something
that we have to wait for after we die.

>> Octavia Butler, could you read a
little from Parable of the Talents?

>> I'm going to read a verse or two.

And keep in mind, these were
written early in the 90s.

But I think they apply forever, actually.

This first one, I have a character
in the books who is, well,

someone who is taking the country fascist,
and who manages to get elected president.

And who, oddly enough, comes from Texas.

And here is one of the things
that my character is inspired

to write about this sort of situation.

She says, choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward is to be
controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by
the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your
most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.

To be lied by a tyrant is to sell
yourself and those you love into slavery.

And there is one other that I thought I should
read, because I see it happening so much.

I got the idea for it when I heard
someone answer a political question

with a political slogan.

And he didn't seem to realize
that he was quoting somebody.

He seemed to have thought that
he had a creative thought there.

And I wrote this verse.

Beware, all too often, we
say what we hear others say.

We think what we are told that we think.

We see what we are permitted to see.

Worse, we see what we are told that we see.

Repetition and pride are the keys to this.

To see and to hear, even an obvious lie,
again and again and again, maybe to say it,

almost by reflex, then to defend
it, because we have said it.

And at last, to embrace it, because we've
defended it, and because we cannot admit

that we've embraced and defended an obvious lie.

Thus, without thought, without intent,
we make mere echoes of ourselves.

And we say what we hear others say.

Just one more comment on the
human condition, I guess.

>> Octavia Butler, a lot of the themes of
your books are about being an outsider.

Talk about that.

And talk about what it means to be.

I mean, here you are a science fiction writer.

It is rare the way you weave in issues
of race, issues of power, religion.

I mean, it's rare to be a black
woman science fiction writer.

>> It's true.

When I was getting started, there
was one other man, Samuel R. Delany,

and he was one of my teachers, and we were
having a panel discussion at a library one day,

and somebody asked, well,
how many of you are there?

And we looked at each other,
and we said, we're two thirds.

There was one other man up
in Canada who was writing,

who has since gone a different direction.

So, things are better now, but there
was a time when there was almost nobody.

>> Why do you think that is?

>> I think part of it is just because
people do what they see other people doing.

I had a student come up to me
at Michigan State University,

and this was a young black woman
many years ago, and say, you know,

I always loved science fiction,
I've always wanted

to write it, but I didn't think we did that.

And she was afraid that if she got
into it, there would be closed doors.

And life is short.

So, sometimes people don't want to take
the risk of running into closed doors.

My friend said to me, you're doing all
this, and we thought you were so brave.

And after a while, we decided that
you just didn't have any sense.

So, I have never really wanted
to do anything else.

>> When you, when you tour around, and
obviously the people who come to the readings,

or the fans who regularly follow you, what
is your sense of your readers in terms

of what they are most attracted
to in your writing?

>> I've always had at least three
groups, identifiable groups of readers.

And I remember trying to convince my publishers
of this early on, and having no success

until I went with a smaller publisher.

But my, the groups, and they used to
have their own independent bookstores.

There are still a few independents left.

But they were science fiction,
black, and feminists.

And they still are.

And, of course, now some mainstream.

So, I'm always glad that there are more
readers and people find out about me.

People keep telling me, oh, I would have
read you before, but I've never heard of you.

>> What about the power of
fundamentalist religion?

>> Oh, I was raised in a fundamentalist church.

I was raised Baptist.

One of my grandfathers was a Baptist preacher.

And I'm actually grateful
for one thing specifically,

had that conscience installed early.

And it's a monster of a conscience.

I can't really get away with things.

I'm not worried about being
caught by other people.

My own conscience is going to get me.

It's when people begin using their religion as
just a way of getting power over other people.

That scares me.

And I'm afraid that's what's going
on in a lot of cases right now.

I mean, when people deliberately tell lies,
creationism, for instance, and pretend, oh,

it's not really religion, I
mean, they know they're lying.

And yet they're the religious people.

There's something wrong there.

When people use their religion to hurt
other people, to say, oh, well, no,

you have to embrace this means of
sex education and not that one,

because our religion says so, it's a misuse.

But I guess religion is such a powerful
thing, it's bound to be misused.

>> As we wrap up this interview,
for young people, as you said,

that you think perhaps there are few
black women science fiction writers,

because they haven't seen them before.

>> Well, there are more now.

The anecdote I told you was several years ago.

>> But when you were a kid

>> There were none.

>> So, how did you go into it?

>> With my eyes tightly shut.

I assumed that I could do it.

I wasn't being brave, or even thoughtful.

I wanted it.

And I assumed I could have it.

>> So, what advice do you
have for young people today?

>> Who want to write?

Oh, definitely that they should.

It's difficult, and sometimes impossible.

I mean, here I am coming off
a very long writer's block,

so I can acknowledge the difficulty.

>> How long?

>> Seven years.

It didn't mean that I wasn't writing.

Writer's block is not when I'm not writing.

It's when I'm not writing anything worthwhile.

>> And for people who suffer
from writer's block, your advice?

>> Keep writing.

Keep writing.

It's the old idea that behavior
that gets repeated tends to,

it gets rewarded, tends to get repeated.

If you stop writing, then you're kind
of rewarding yourself with not writing.

If you keep writing, after a while, your
brain maybe gets the idea, I'm not sure I said

that very clearly, but I
hope you know what I mean.

Just that if you are a writer,
you can't stop writing.

I used to have a teacher who said, if anything
can prevent you being a writer, don't be one.