Welcome to Read This Book, a newsletter where I recommend one book that should absolutely be put at the top of your TBR pile. Recommended books will vary across genre and age category and include shiny new books, older books you may have missed, and some classics I suggest finally getting around to.
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One of my biggest regrets is not really learning about and beginning to appreciate Octavia E. Butler’s work until after I moved away from Pasadena, where she grew up, and today’s pick is a lovely introduction to the author as a person and visionary.
Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler by Ibi Zoboi
This book is part biographical, a little bit autobiographical, and between these biographical bits are interspersed poems by author Ibi Zoboi. These poems are inspired by Octavia E. Butler, her life, her work, and the world she grew up in.
I remember seeing a Tweet from someone that said something like, “okay poets we get it, things are like other things” and that always makes me laugh but truly, poetry is a way of looking at something, whether it’s a physical thing or a feeling or a person or a life, in a way that we haven’t examined it before. Poetry can help us see things differently and this book is such a stunning, lovely example of that.
There is plenty more than biographical prose and poetry in this book. There are also photographs, including the earliest photo of Octavia Estelle when she was four years old. There are also some other historical images for context but there are a few that I am high-key obsessed with. One is a page from the first novel she wrote when she was ten. Octavia Estelle Butler was obsessed with horses. So she started writing a story about magical horses who live on an island. She was a shy and quiet child and would find solace in her writing and she would just write and write in her pink notebook. She knew she wanted to be a writer, even though her aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.” Octavia Estelle was insistent.
Another of my favorite other images included in this book is one of the many notes of inspiration that Octavia E. Butler wrote to herself which turned into inspiration for my most recent tattoo. I adore this book and it’s a great recommendation for folks who are familiar with Octavia E. Butler as well as folks who are just learning about her.
That’s it for now, book-lovers!
Patricia
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