Octavia E. Butler is widely recognized today as one of the most important figures in contemporary science fiction. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars and covering Butler’s complete works from the bestselling novel Kindred, to her short stories and major novel sequences Patternmaster, Xenogenesis and The Parables, this is the most comprehensive Companion to Butler scholarship available today. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Octavia E. Butler covers the full range of contemporary scholarly themes and approaches to the author’s work, including: · Cyborgs and the posthuman · Race and African American history · Afrofuturism · Gender and sexuality · New perspectives from Religious Studies, the Environmental Humanities and Disability Studies · New discoveries from the Butler archives at the Huntington Library The book includes a comprehensive bibliography of works by Butler and secondary scholarship on her work as well as an afterword by the novelist Tananarive Due.

Table of Contents:
FOREWORD Sandra Y. Govan INTRODUCTION Gregory J. Hampton and Kendra R. Parker PART I: Dawn What Octavia E. Butler Feared Most About Human Nature Steven Barnes, Science fiction, fantasy and horror author “I want to live forever and breed people!”: The Legacy of a Fantasy Heather Thaxter, University Centre Doncaster, UK Interpreting Disability Metaphor and Race in Octavia E. Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night.” Sami Schalk, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Problematizing Consent in the Posthuman Era: Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild” and “Amnesty” Joe Heidenescher, Howard University, USA PART II: Adulthood Rites “I’m not the vampire he is; I give in return for my taking”: Tracing Vampirism in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy Kendra R. Parker, Georgia Southern University, USA Becoming-Posthuman: The Sexualized, Racialized, and Naturalized Others of Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood Kitty Dunkley, independent scholar Teaching the “Other” of Colonialism: The Mimic (Wo)Men of Xenogenesis Aparajita Nanda, University of California, Berkeley, USA Octavia E. Butler’s Discourse on Colonialism and Identity: Dis/eased Identity in “Bloodchild,” Dawn, and Survivor Gregory J. Hampton, Howard University, USA PART III: Imago Visualizing Dana and Transhistorical Time Travel on the Covers of Octavia E. Butler's Kindred Christine Montgomery, California State University, Sacramento, USA and Ellen C. Caldwell, Mt. San Antonio College, USA Apocalypse, Afro-Futures, & Theories of “the Living” Beyond Human Rights: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable Series Chriss Sneed, University of Connecticut , USA Trauma, Technology, and the Trickster: Reading Octavia E. Butler’s Unfinished Trilogy Ji Hyun Lee, Cornell University, USA The Pregnant Man Story: Echoes of Octavia E. Butler’s Themes of Reproductive Anxiety in Fan Writing Heather Osborne, independent scholar A Space for Discomfort: Octavia E. Butler and the Pedagogy of the Taboo Aryn Bartley, Lane Community College, USA Finding the Superhero in Damian Duffy’s and John Jennings’s Graphic Novel Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Science-Fiction-Postmodern-Slave-Narrative, Kindred Forrest Yerman, Howard University, USA AFTERWORD Tananarive Due, University of California Los Angeles, USA