Skip to Main Content
John M. Flaxman Library SAIC School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Octavia’s Brood Research Guide

About the Book

“Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia’s Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas.” -- from AK Press

Reviews

Brooding Over Revolution and Bending Realities: Sci Fi as Social Movement
Kim Smith | The Institute for Anarchist Studies | September 6, 2016

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
Venetria K. Patton | New York Journal of Books | May 15, 2015

Parables of the Revolution
Glenna Martin | Real Change News | August 26, 2015

Strange Horizons Review
Nino Cipri | Strange Horizons | November 2, 2015

What If We Can Change Everything? 
James Mumm | Reviews for Radicals [Blog] | April 1, 2024

Scholarship

Everyday Moments of Disruption: Navigating Towards Utopia
Molly Ackhurst | Studies in Arts and Humanities Journal, vol. 5 (1) | p. 115-128 | 2019

Just Stories: The Role of Speculative Fiction in Challenging the Growing Climate Apartheid
Nick WoodI and Faeza Meyer | Psychology in Society, (63) | p. 29-51 | 2022

Toward a Planetary History of Afrofuturism 
Sofia Samatar | Research in African Literatures vol. 48 (4) | p. 175-191 | Winter, 2017

Interviews + Discussions

The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice: A conversation with the authors of Octavia's Brood
Walidah Imarisha, Alexis Gumbs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, adrienne maree brown and Mia Mingus | The New Inquiry | April 20, 2017

Collectively Dreaming New Worlds: Walidah Imarisha on ‘Octavia’s Brood’
Joe Macaré | Truthout | August 10, 2015

Resistance Writers: An Interview with Bao Phi Words 
Thomas Chisholm and Bao Phi | F(r)iction

About Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work.” - estate website’s About the Author page

“Today, her writing is often read inspirationally and aspirationally. Some have taken the tenets of Earthseed literally as a philosophy of living. “Octavia Butler knew” is a common response to cataclysm. Butler did not believe in utopia, but there is a deep strain of hope in how people engage with her work: a desire to learn how to save ourselves from this mess we’ve made. She wasn’t sure imperfect people could ever create a perfect world, but they could try.” - Vulture Profile, 2022

Learn More

Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into The Story [Podcast Episode]
Karen Grigsby Bates and Rachel Martin | Code Switch | 7 min | July 2017
*This podcast DOES provide transcripts

The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler
E. Alex Jung | Vulture | November 2022

Why Octavia E Butler’s Novels Are So Relevant Today
Hephzibah Anderson | BBC | March 2020