Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Butler, Octavia - Danille Taylor-Guthrie (review date 31 March 1996)

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Danille Taylor-Guthrie (review date 31 March 1996)

SOURCE: "Writing Because She Must: Octavia Butler's Stories, Essays," in Chicago Tribune Books, March 31, 1996, p. 5.

[Taylor-Guthrie is assistant professor of Afro-American Studies at Indiana University Northwest. In the following review, she praises the stories in Butler's Bloodchild and Other Stories as "vintage Butler."]

Octavia Butler is the only woman among the four most prominent African-American science-fiction writers, a group that includes Samuel R. Delany Jr., Steven Barnes and Charles R. Saunders. Her grounding in African-American culture, concern for feminist issues and ability to imagine the future make her work unique, and were presumably factors that brought her a well-deserved MacArthur Fellowship in 1995.

Bloodchild and Other Stories should delight Butler devotees and attract new readers. The volume contains five previously published stories, each...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ruth Salvaggio (essay date Summer 1984)
   2. Octavia Butler with Frances M. Beal (interview date March/April 1986)
   3. Sandra Y. Govan (essay date Spring-Summer 1986)
   4. Adele S. Newson (review date Summer 1989)
   5. Frances Bonner (essay date Spring 1990)
   6. Hoda M. Zaki (essay date July 1990)
   7. Octavia Butler with Randall Kenan (interview date Spring 1991)
   8. Orson Scott Card (review date January 1992)
   9. Michelle Erica Green (essay date 1994)
   10. Rebecca O. Johnson (review date February 1994)
   11. Elyce Rae Helford (essay date Summer 1994)
   12. Hoda Zaki (review date July 1994)
   13. Cathy Peppers (essay date March 1995)
   14. Jim Miller (review date February/March 1996)
   15. Danille Taylor-Guthrie (review date 31 March 1996)
   16. Octavia Butler with Stephen W. Potts (interview date November 1996)
   17. Madelyn Jablon (essay date 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Octavia Butler