Speech Sounds

Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

 Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

• a collection of science fiction stories that engage with fundamental themes at the core of Butler’s speculative fiction: inequality, power, and the re-imagination of political systems

 "Amnesty" in Bloodchild

• a short story in Butler’s collection Bloodchild (2005) that centers on a woman’s efforts to bridge the differences between human beings and an alien species
• explores themes of communication, political hierarchies, and survival

Vox by Christina Dalcher

• a speculative novel published in 2018 about a near-future US in which females are compelled to limit their speech to just 100 words each day
• connects to the themes of communication, feminism, and inequality

Other Student Resources

"Afterword"

• In her “Afterword” to “Speech Sounds” (scroll past the story to find it), Octavia Butler recalls how the story “was conceived in weariness, depression, and sorrow” during the terminal illness of a close friend.
• connects to the themes of survival and hope

Why Octavia E. Butler's Novels Are So Relevant Today

• This March 2020 BBC Culture feature by Hephzibah Anderson provides a brief biographical sketch of Octavia Butler and considers how her writings can be seen as “potent calls to socio-political action that seem ever more pertinent to our survival as a species.”

Why Should You Read Sci-Fi Superstar Octavia Butler?

• This Ted-Ed video digs into Butler’s works and looks at how they transformed traditional science fiction by presenting the experiences of diverse characters.

Remembering Octavia Butler

• In this 2005 interview with Democracy Now!, Octavia Butler talks about religion, power, lies, climate change, being an outsider, and writer’s block.

Teacher Resources

Transcript: Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, 1998

• a transcript of a discussion held at MIT in February 1998, between two of the first Black American writers of science fiction, Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany
• Along with Professor Henry Jenkins and several others, Butler and Delany talk about literacy, race and science fiction, “the age of misinformation,” and “cyberspace and inequality.”