Positive Obsession Quotes

“Black women’s genius is so rarely recognized, much less understood. And when it is recognized and celebrated, it is often too late.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“Every time I teach the Parable series the world seems to be on fire.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“Octavia was shocked but not surprised. She had despised Reagan ever since he had been elected California’s governor in 1967. His turn in the White House only served to increase her ire. Here was the president of the most powerful nation on Earth talking about a “winnable” nuclear war—as if that were possible!”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“There is poetic justice in the fact that this era, between the civil rights movement and the nation’s Bicentennial, also sees the creation and rise of the neo-slave novel, with Octavia’s Kindred being one of the most groundbreaking examples of the genre.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“I NEED PEOPLE.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“I spent a lot of my childhood being ashamed of what she [her mother] did, and I think one of the reasons I wrote Kindred was to resolve my feelings, because, after all, I ate because of what she did . . . Kindred was kind of a reaction to some of the things going on during the sixties when people were feeling ashamed of, or more strongly, angry with their parents for not having improved things faster, and I wanted to take a person from today and send that person back to slavery.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

“Estelle would grow up seeing a lot of powerful white men on her television screen telling people what to do. Men who invited Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. Men who proclaimed segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. Men who implored the country to unite. Men who turned water hoses and German shepherds onto Black children who could have been her classmates. Like these other men, the white men in Devil Girl from Mars reflected the signs of the times.”
― Susana M. Morris, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler