Throughout October, we want to bring awareness to important Black figures. By highlighting the challenges that the Black community has endured, we hope to help understand and support the modern community that continues to thrive today.

We have been working with Celia Dipple, a Falmouth University Illustration student, to shine the spotlight on some important figures in the Black community.

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Octavia E. Butler

1947 – 2006 
 
Octavia Butler was a visionary American science fiction writer. She was the first African American woman to break through the male dominated field and went on to win two Nebula awards – the highest award for science fiction.  

Her writing explored race, gender, feminism, poverty and injustice and continues to be studied across universities today through lenses such as queer theory, disability studies and Afrofuturism which she is considered to be the mother of.  
 
Butler herself claimed to write cautionary tales of what may happen socially, politically and spiritually if we succumb to inaction and do not challenge inequality.  

Her work serves as a powerful call to imagine and prepare for the future together, to generate the ideas we want to see in the world.  
 
In her later years, Butler examined themes of Black injustice, global warming, women’s rights and political disparity.  

Since her death in 2006, her work has been seen as prophetic as these themes become increasingly relevant to our times. 
 
“All that you touch 
You Change. 
 
All that you Change 
Changes you. 
 
The only lasting truth 
is Change. 
 
God 
is Change.” 

To see more Black History Month profiles, news, resources and events, visit the SU Black History Month hub. 

www.thesu.org.uk/blackhistorymonth