HTA – Octavia E. Butler, African American Science Fiction, and Rites of Passage

Mississippi Valley State University – Business Education Auditorium, Itta Bena, MS

This presentation will discuss aspects of Butler’s life, African American patterns of: the slave narrative, “double consciousness” and Afrofuturism in her work. The texts of the Patternist, Xenogenesis, and Parable series are included as well as Fledgling.  The texts will also be analyzed in light of Victor Turner’s theories of Rites of Passage and “liminality”.