Ibi Zoboi - Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler

DUTTON CHILDRENS BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

First published in the United States of America by Dutton Childrens Books,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022

Copyright 2022 by Ibi Zoboi

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Ebook ISBN 9780399187391

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Cover design by Anna Booth

Design by Anna Booth, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

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For stargazers and daydreamers;
soothsayers and storytellers;
Octavias brood.

Im the kind of person who looks for a complex way to say something.... Poetry simplifies it. When I started to write poetry, I was forced to pay attention word by word, line by line.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

PART I

Parable of the Sower

[My mother] only had three years of education; she was pulled out of school early to be put to work. My grandmother was widowed about the time the Depression started. This meant that a lot of her older childrenthey were poor anywaydidnt get to get an education. She was glad I was [inside] reading because if I was in the house reading I wasnt out getting into trouble, and maybe I might survive.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

STARDUST

What if on the day she was born there was a quiet storm of tiny

shimmering dust that settled on tree leaves, on flower petals,

on rooftops, on the ground, on the shiny work shoes, and

glided through open windows to settle on hardwood

floors? Maybe there was a storm of stardust and

this was how Laurice James Butler and

Octavia Margaret Butler gave

birth to a baby girl named

Octavia Estelle Butler,

a star child.

Dawn

LAURICE JAMES BUTLER, who worked as a shoeshine man, and Octavia Margaret Butler, who worked as a live-in domestic servant, were married on May 17, 1931, in Los Angeles, California. On June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California, they gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Octavia Estelle Butler.

Laurice died on February 16, 1951, when Octavia was almost four years old. She knew very little about her father. She was raised by her mother and grandmothertwo hardworking and God-fearing matriarchs. For a brief period, she also lived with her two uncles, each like a father to her.

Octavia Margaret Butler, her mother, was the greatest constant in her life. She was born in Louisiana in 1914 and lived on a sugarcane plantation before migrating with her familyand hundreds of thousands of other African Americansto Southern California as part of the Great Migration that was reshaping cities in the North and West.

Octavia Estelle with her mother, Octavia Margaret, in 1951 when she was four years old. This is the earliest photo of Octavia Estelle.

DAUGHTER OF DUST

Octavia Estelle was born from dust

like the clouds that rose up

from the stiff, black

leather shoes;

like the clouds that rose up

from the cool, hard

wooden floors.

Then the dust settled again,

swept away with

bolls of pure white cotton

like the ones in the fields

picked by her mothers mothers

and her fathers fathers,

white like clouds.

Wiped clean

like sunny days,

like moonlit skies,

like freedom.

The rattling of coins

in a metal bucket

for newly shined shoes

was music to her father dust.

The pitter-patter of baby feet

on newly shined floors

was the dancing to her mother dust.

Father Laurice made the leather shine

not wanting to be like dust

settling on shoes

invisible except when the wearer looked down.

Mother Octavia made the wood shine

not wanting to be like dust

settling on floors

invisible except when the employer looked down.

Swoosh. Swoosh.

With their white cotton rags,

they waged war against the

dust,

freeing their daughter from this hard work,

and letting her rise up into the wide, empty space

to become stardust.

ZEITGEIST

Pearl Harbor, Allied powers.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

Toy soldiers, United Nations,

Federal Bureau of Investigation!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

World War, Cold War,

Indo-Pakistani War!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Duke, Ella, Satchmo.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

Richard, Langston, Gwendolyn,

Black Tuskegee Airmen!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Lynch mob, atomic bomb.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

Hollywood, UFO,

Roswell, New Mexico!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Israel, Palestine.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

Communism, pacifism,

Racism, nationalism!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Movie stars, life on Mars.

Baby, boom! Baby, boom!

President Truman, Red Scare,

the Soviets are everywhere!

Left. Left.

Left, right. Left.

Spirit of the Times

ZEITGEIST IS A GERMAN WORD that means spirit of the times, and people often use it to characterize the forces that shape a period of history. When Octavias parents were married in 1931, the spirit was dark as the nation was mired deep in the worst economic crisis in American historythe Great Depression. The second decade of their marriage saw the spirit shift from one of global economic hardship to one of global war. World War II began for America in 1941, when Japan attacked a naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

For Black Americans like Laurice and Octavia Margaret, their lives were also shaped by a thriving Black culture that spread throughout America, starting with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s and continued by writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes; musicians like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Satchmo Armstrong; as well as groundbreaking athlete Jackie Robinson, while violent overt racism terrorized Black people all over the country.