Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

1/22/2025

Introduction

Long lauded for her masterful blend of science fiction and realistic social observations, author Octavia E. Butler’s name over the past decade has grown to command greater and greater attention as a highly-significant American master of literary innovation. That conviction has intensified with the tragic fires which decimated communities in southern California during the first half of January 2025 and left survivors on edge as they waited to see what a years-long drought, and the legendary Santa Ana winds, would deliver in the second half.

The historic tragedy, along with the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, led many posting on social media to bestow the word “prophetic” upon Butler’s classic 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, due to the author’s seemingly prescient allusion to them. Butler herself famously coined the term histofuturism , making her a histofuturist, to describe her method of researching and analyzing past societal trends to gain understanding of problematic present-day conditions and devise strategies for correcting such dangerous imbalances.

The cautionary implications of Butler’s work were evident enough 15 years ago that she was one of 5 Notable Women of the Past and Present featured in my special Black History Month and Women’s History Month article series published on AXS’s former Examiner platform in 2010. It should be noted that Butler’s novel did not become a New York Times bestseller until 2020. For the first time since the Examiner platform folded, the tribute article to Butler is presented (with minor edits) in full along with the review of Parable of the Sower then included. [Although fire caused extensive damage in Los Angeles County’s Eaton community within Altadena , where Butler is buried, her grave-site reportedly sustained minimal damage.]

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Octavia Estelle Butler achieved the unprecedented feat of winning three major science fiction awards––the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, all in 1985––before going on in 1995 to also win the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award. This achievement, in addition to a number of other honors, established Butler as a “grand dame” of science fiction. It also placed her within the genre on a level comparable to that of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker within mainstream literary fiction.

The daughter of Laurice and Octavia M. (Guy) Butler, the author was born June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California [where approximately 8,000 structures have been destroyed by fire in January 2025]. After attending Pasadena City College, California State University in Los Angeles, and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop, she went on to launch her literary career in 1976 with the publication of the novel Patternmaster. Over the three decades that followed, until her death February 24, 2006, she would publish almost a dozen more novels including Kindred and Parable of the Talents; and the short fiction collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Innovative Literary Vision

Butler’s work explores and expands the basic language of science fiction. In particular, she utilizes an interest in such subjects as psionic abilities, genetic engineering, different forms of power, and advanced alien intelligence to explore more earthbound themes of racial and sexual awareness. The various categories into which human beings place each other might be seen through Butler’s literary glasses as hierarchies that do more harm than good by encouraging and sustaining degrading forms of dominance rather than mutual respect or tolerance. In an essay for NPR titled U.N. Racism Conference, she observed the following:

“Back during the early 1960s there was a United Nations television commercial, the audio portion of which went something like this: ‘Ignorance, fear, disease, hunger, suspicion, hatred, war.’ That was it, although I would have added, ‘greed’ and ‘vengeance’ to the list. All or any of these can be the catalyst that turns hierarchical thinking into hierarchical behavior. Amid all this, does tolerance have a chance?

“Only if we want it to. Only when we want it to. Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.”

The author was particularly noted for her creation of unique yet believable female characters and her accomplishments in this area paved the way for such contemporary Black women speculative fiction writers as Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson.

Speaking to Los Angeles Times reporter Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Tananarive Due stated, "In black speculative fiction, we are a tiny family and Octavia Butler was our matriarch.”

Parable of the Sower

precisely as many say it is doing in 2025Within the first dozen pages of Parable of the Sower, readers encounter a typical family armed with guns on their way to church, a headless corpse, a naked homeless woman, a community walled in by terror, and a young woman dreaming of stars.

The dreamer is 16-year-old Lauren Oya Olamina, the would-be-sower and teller of the parable. The place is California. The time 2024-2027 A.D. And nothing in America is how it used to be. The world to come, as Butler presents it in this novel, is one ruled by the more brutal forms of anarchy [with the threat of autocracy steadily increasing, precisely as many say it is doing in 2025].

(Original photograph of Octavia E. Butler by Cheung Ching-Ming. Edit with Butler quote by Bright Skylark LP)

Everyday life becomes an actual war between the “haves” and “have-nots” battling over each other’s few pitiful possessions. Children are stolen into slavery; women are raped at will. Dogs roam the land as wild killers. Policemen are barely distinguishable from criminals, and drug-crazed maniacs run around setting fires for the high of their lives.

Such is the world in which Lauren finds herself as she comes painfully of age. Black, bold, and brilliant, she has the misfortune of having been born with “hyperempathy.” This hyperempathy “is what the doctors call an ‘organic delusional syndrome’… I get a lot of grief that doesn’t belong to me, and that isn’t real. But it hurts.”

The syndrome is one that literally puts flesh on the spiritual equation that hurting another is equal to hurting oneself. The disadvantages of her condition are magnified that much more when she is constantly forced into gunfights to save her own or someone else’s life. For example: “I knew at once that I’d hit him. He didn’t fall, but I felt his pain… Then he toppled, and I collapsed with him.”

Described as a “sharer,” Lauren deals with her condition and her world by immersing herself in the composition of “Earthseed.” At first, “Earthseed” is nothing more than a kind of juvenile poetry that aids her understanding of life in general. She later decides it is nothing less than a revelation of universal truth regarding the permanent nature of God as on-going change:

“Any change may bear seeds of benefit./ See them out./ Any change may bear seeds of harm./ Beware./ God is infinitely malleable./ God is change.”

For Lauren, serious change comes at the age of eighteen when marauders kill her family along with numerous others and burn down their neighborhood. She is forced to team up with two neighbors she has never really liked. They set out somewhat vaguely for possibly Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, or Canada. As they travel, like Dorothy and company on their way to see the Wizard of Oz, they are joined by others searching for the magic of sanity. Ex-slaves, former prostitutes, a once-wealthy doctor, and orphaned children all eventually find their way into the caravan, all courageously led by Lauren.

Despite constant violence, hunger, and the threat of firestorms sweeping across the land, they maintain their vows to protect each other and even find love among their numbers. Nearly at the bottom of hell, Butler’s characters levitate naturally toward a sense of family in order to survive and flourish. Racially, socially, and temperamentally mixed, they manage to achieve a strained but functional unity. Without realizing it, Lauren evolves into a kind of warrior prophet, a futuristic Harriet Tubman leading her rainbow coalition of survivors beyond the reach of Armageddon.

From the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, readers know that Lauren’s ideas and teachings inevitably become “Earthseed: The Books of the Living.” The book is clearly a manual for surviving social, political, and personal chaos. Lauren leaves little doubt as to where she stands:

Embrace diversity.
Unite––
Or be divided,
robbed,
killed
by those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity.
Or be destroyed.

Octavia Butler set her novel some thirty-five years in the future from the date she wrote it, which as of this writing (in 2010) places it fifteen years in the future. Most of what Parable of the Sower has to say regarding contemporary times is implied rather than overtly stated. However, the man Lauren eventually marries, Bankole, realizes that all the horrors of their time are not new:

“In the early 1990s while I was in college, I heard about cases of growers doing some of this––holding people against their wills and forcing them to work without pay. Latins in California, blacks and Latinos in the South. Now and then, someone would go to jail for it.”

Imagine that: a man in what was then the future commenting on a past so eerily relevant to what is now the present.

by Aberjhani
Author of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

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The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

12/26/2022

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The beginnings of the last few years––“arguably,” as some like to say––have presented humanity with more reasons to dread flipping the calendar from December to January that to celebrate it. But some of us insist on excavating beauty out of horror and looking forward with measures of hopefulness: regardless of reasons to do otherwise.

Prior to the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine back in February, the year 2022 had already started on a somber personal note due to the death of fellow author Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr., on December 31, 2021. While mourning his death, I celebrated Mickles’ life and legacy online at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated intentions to hang around much longer than anybody wanted. I then moved cautiously forward into the year addressing the following:

After posting the above stories and essays, I was all set to push forward on the completion of the previously-announced letters, poetry, and art book project. Then a certain Russian oligarch, not necessarily addressing me directly, said not so fast. The barrage of images showing cities in Ukraine tumbling like dominoes, children and elderly people lying dead in the streets or struggling to escape the relentless unprovoked chaos, and a future Time Magazine Person of the Year requesting assistance from world leaders, made it impossible to ignore what many nations viewed as a direct attack on democracy.

("Ukraine Russia & The Art of Being Human" artwork by Aberjhani originally published in 2022 with article on LinkedIn.)

Some have actually criticized the outpouring of support for Ukraine, measured in billions of dollars and public expressions of solidarity, since the war’s beginning. They point out what they perceive of as a disproportionate response to violent clashes in other non-European countries.

These other equally abhorrent conflicts were already taking place in the world. They remain major factors in numerous international leaders and everyday world citizens belief that Russia’s brutal aggressiveness cannot stand unanswered. Responding to the threat of a potential world war 3 is something most have never anticipated in our age of technical wonders but respond we did:

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (Pt. 2 of 2)

In addition, dominating international political discourses as it did, there was no way to keep the war out of the Conversations with the World series here at Bright Skylark. Given that the pens of poets and brushes of artists have long been employed to make sense of human beings’ tendency to inflict destruction upon each other and planet Earth, it would have been irresponsible not to address Russia’s war in Ukraine on multiple platforms throughout 2022. The global ripple effects of the war have generally been unavoidable: the crippling inflation, food and energy insecurity, and increased ecological instability.

Conversations with the World 110: Some 2022 Thoughts on Love and War

There was no official war declared in America against Jews, Asians, Muslims, or African Americans. Yet hate crimes against them rose to some of the highest levels in years.

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

In the midst of all the international and domestic rage, certain achievements have helped us to maintain faith in the better qualities of our collective characters. The breath-taking photos of double-deep space captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, with its remarkable images of barely-formed galaxies and developing stars, reminded everybody just how much bigger existence is than a single individual, nation, planet, or even universe.

Closer to the literary values promoted on this website: In nods to the often overlooked contributions of African-American women to their homeland, the late memoirist-poet-educator-activist Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to be featured on a U.S. quarter. Ketanji Brown Jackson stepped into history by becoming the first Black woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Moreover: an 18-year-old named Jaylen Smith became the youngest Black man in American history ever elected mayor when he won his bid for the position in Earle, Arkansas. And Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) became the first African-American voted to lead the House Democratic Caucus.

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

The “Hidden Histories” Savannah authors and books collage by Hannah Brawley can be found on the Georgia Historical Society's website at https://georgiahistory.com/marker-monday-hidden-histories-2/. Located at top center of the collage is ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love by Aberjhani and Luther E. Vann. Also included are works by authors: James Alan McPherson, Conrad Aiken, Johnny Mercer, Jack Leigh, Mrs. Wilkes, Murray Silver, Flannery O'Connor, and John Berendt.

I’m also glad to note advancements on different fronts here at Bright Skylark. Back in March, I had the honor of participating in a very successful Authors Day event. It was held in historic Lafayette Square, in downtown Savannah, Georgia, just across the street from iconic author Flannery O’Connor’s Childhood Home and the world-famous Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist. This was my first such outing since the pandemic hit in 2020 and turned me into a semi-comfortable recluse. The Authors Day event made it possible for me to finally make up for all the Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind launch presentations I’d had to cancel due to COVID-19 surges.

In addition, later in the year, the long-awaited 2022 Flannery O’Connor Review spotlighting my artwork and poetry was published. Some celebrated the rarity of such an occurrence while others quietly dismissed it. For this author-artist, it helped bring some much-needed balance to public discourses on racial issues attached to O’Connor’s work and life. It also alerted readers to recently completed art, letters, and poetry book.

Later, in the summer, I joined fellow authors George Dawes Green, writer-poet Jon Goode, and Edgar Oliver on stage as a guest “raconteur” for a celebration of The Moth organization’s 20th anniversary and the release of Green’s novel: Kingdoms of Savannah. (Still need to carve out time to write my essay on KINGDOMS.) The sold-out Moth performance was enough to convince me to also participate in the Art on Bull Street fundraiser in October. Sadly, while I was invited to participate in The Oxford Union’s 2022 International Poetry Symposium on November 28, several developments prevented me from making the trip across the Atlantic Ocean for that event.

Which brings me to plans and works in progress for the year 2023.

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NEXT: The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 2): Looking Ahead

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Conversations with the World 111: Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves (pt. 2 of 2)

11/2/2022

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"Land of the Misinformed Dreamers" art by Aberjhani C2022.)

“…I believe that democracy is a political enactment of a spiritual idea. The sacred worth of all human beings, the notion that we all have within us, a spark of the divine, to participate in the shaping of our own destiny.”
––U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (maiden floor speech March 17, 2021)

The practice among some “leaders,” in recent years and months, of intentionally spreading disinformation to achieve political or military objectives has been all but normalized. The absence of ethicality in such a tactic is ignored. One example within the United States has become a constant source of material for late-night comics: it is the power which former U.S. president Donald Trump continues to wield over election deniers despite numerous documented reasons he should not.

[You can read part 1 of this conversation by clicking right here]

Late-night comics like Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, and Steve Colbert do a great job providing humorous relief from the stressful knowledge of very real threats represented by extremist followers of Mr. Trump. On the other hand, the televised findings of the January 6th Committee emphasize repeatedly how little there is to laugh about when examining in-depth evidence which suggests Trump played a more active role in the so-called attempted insurrection against the American government than most Americans wish to believe. Moreover, as evidenced by the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the desire among election deniers to inflict physical violence upon Trump’s political opponents has not diminished.

Are the comedians and January 6 committee members directing their spoken truths more at Donald Trump’s personal powers of political persuasion? Or that of the American people’s collective ability to protect democratic values? Results from mid-term elections in the U.S., up to this point at the beginning of November, have been mixed enough to indicate many are listening but reaching different conclusions concerning what they hear.

Speaking Truth to Your Individual Power

Individual considerations concerning one’s own power, depending on the solitary soul in question, can result in a range of consequences. Some conclude that without substantial wealth, social influence, or political office: power is something they do not possess. As such, they avoid attempting to speak truth to those who clearly do wield some manner of authoritative might and readily follow questionable leaders without offering much input of their own. When George Benson and Whitney Houston sang their respective versions of Linda Creed’s and Michael Massers song, The Greatest, they may have summed up what many consider their only claim to notable strength: “No matter what they take from me/ they can’t take away my dignity.”

At the far opposite end are: those so convinced of their own capabilities they revel in notions of rulership and control which not only place them above all others, but above any governing laws or regulations. Most of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle of these two extremes––an absolute lack of power or the sole commander of it–– attempting to balance the implications of both. That means those who believe they do not possess any significant measures of power nevertheless encounter situations where they are required to exercise the same. And those who believe they are “all powerful” discover the pain of disillusionment revealing them to be as susceptible to defeats or disciplinary actions as anyone else.

When ordinary American citizens, however, found their lives upended by Infowars host Alex Jones prolonged promotion of the conspiracy theory claiming the 2012 Sandy Hooks massacre was a hoax, they were forced to fight back. Already dealing with the grief of losing loved ones to America’s epidemic of gun violence, reliving the agony in a court room battle against orchestrated guerrilla decontextualization was likely the last thing they ever anticipated. Their painful truth leveraged against the substantial power of Jones’ influence resulted in multiple verdicts, in Texas and Connecticut, totaling just over $1 billion.

Are there any who can afford to ignore their individual ability to make a difference for the better: in such days as when Earth’s mightiest rivers are drying up due to human-driven climate change? When war on different continents destroys entire communities on a daily basis? And when the powerful prey with impunity upon the vulnerabilities and ignorance of those weakened by hunger and despair? Speaking truth to your own power first requires acknowledgement that it exists. Then comes reflections on what it means to exercise it in specific ways––or fail to employ it at all––just when it is needed the most.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

CATCH UP ON MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

Conversations 111 Part 1: Speaking Truth to Power

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Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

12/1/2021

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In his November 12, 2021, essay for England’s The Guardian newspaper, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Oki urged creative artists around the globe to dedicate their inspired labors to the production of works addressing the catastrophic crises of the current era. In his words:

“I propose existential creativity, to serve the unavoidable truth of our times, and a visionary existentialism, to serve the future that we must bring about from the brink of our environmental catastrophe.”

It just so happens that many creative artists already advocate not only for environmental justice, but also for economic justice, gender equality, and antiracism. That Okri declined in his op-ed/essay to comment on the last in this year when the verdict for the trial of the death of George Floyd made headlines around the world, and the trial for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was moving toward a similar outcome, is a little baffling. After all, ending death by racism and xenophobia is no less a global crisis than preventing mass destruction from human-induced climate change. Neither, for that matter, is a coronavirus capable of masking itself and attacking our species in different mutated guises: such as Delta and Omicron.

Deatail from "Finding Shelter in a Circle of Gratitude Number 3: Meanwhile Back on Earth" art by Aberjhani. Full wall art print available for purchase on artist's Fine Art America and Pixels profiles as well as here at Bright Skylark.)

Does any of that mean Okri’s call for more mindful considerations of climate change should be ignored? Not at all. But how any given creative chooses to respond to it is up to them. My own compulsion to address climate change is apparent in the article, “The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial,” in artwork currently on exhibit in the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport Art Gallery, and in the book, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah.

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

I first became aware of Okri’s commanding literary voice after his novel, The Famished Road, catapulted him to world fame in the 1990s. If I hadn’t been a bookseller at the time, I probably would not have learned about the title. Moreover, I likely would have missed out on the gems which have continued to flow from his pen.

The Famished Road turned out to be one of those rare reads which I never wanted to put down and rushed back to at every opportunity. My review essay on it was published first in the now defunct Georgia Guardian newspaper and, later, in my AXS Entertainment African-American Cultural Arts column. In it, I pointed out something which illustrates well Okri’s current howl of existential angst:

His work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called “destiny” to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit? (From essay Ben Okri’s Famished Road Leads to Thrilling Reading Pleasure, by Aberjhani)

When considering the above observation made years ago, it becomes easy to see why much of my recent literary and fine visual art has indeed been mindful responses to the turbulent terrors of this historical moment. With climate change denial literally stoking the flames of mass destruction, xenophobia prompting unjust killings, and armed conflicts increasing instead of decreasing, how could they be otherwise? Small wonder that billionaire’s are investing their cash into space-bound rockets.

Supporting the Process

My brand of existential creativity cannot include the assertion that these days are humanity’s last days. I have to hold my creative endeavors and my mindful intentions accountable for something more than standing on street corners screaming the end is near. That is where the “visionary” aspect of Okri’s battle cry comes into play and where our philosophical approaches align best.

It is, without question, imperative we acknowledge the near-apocalyptic conditions forcing dangerous human migrations all over the world and producing toxic circumstances both physical and psychic in nature. It is equally vital we propose and work to secure alternative outcomes. My way of supporting that process has been, and remains, to help provide language, images, and strategies which enable us to steer our way through the raging chaos. How many before us have had to so the same?

The spark of life itself never goes out completely. The stream of existence adapts to new pathways and new challenges while yet flowing steadily toward a horizon of uncertainty and a dawn of renewed hope. This reflection is not intended to suggest the existential perils before us are insignificant. It is intended to affirm the priceless value of all we stand to lose and which yet might be salvaged.

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

CATCH UP ON MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

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Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Turns 18!

9/1/2021

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Celebrating the 18th anniversary of the publication of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File/Infobase Publishing) by Aberjhani and Sandra L. West with foreword by Clement Alexander Price. Original cover art painting by Jacob A. Lawrence.

The fact that Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance turns 18 in September makes me more than a little emotional. It was my second major book (after the birth of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry) and at this time I feel about it as many parents do when an offspring turns 18: apprehensive, reflective, grateful to have come this far.

Several days passed before I allowed myself to actually pick up a copy of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance after boxes of both the hardback and paperback editions arrived at my home in September 2003. The cover art, featuring a painting by celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence, was so beautiful I almost felt like touching it would be a criminal offense. (The more recent second edition has art by Archibald J. Motley on the cover.)

Having labored virtually nonstop for months and years prior to that moment to complete the encyclopedia, I suddenly found the anticipated joy of physically holding the book plagued by fears and doubts. Much the way humanity en masse of late has found itself afflicted by divisions over vaccinations and face mask mandates when it comes to continuing the battle against COVID-19 and its more lethal Delta variant.

My problem had nothing to do with a virus and everything to do with lingering questions over how well my writing partner, Sandra, and I had fulfilled a mission we both considered sacred. Had we utilized available resources efficiently enough? Had we provided readers fair balanced interpretations of “known facts” relevant to our subjects’ lives? Was the work a worthy tribute to their phenomenal accomplishments and sacrifices? I had gone through a similar trial of initiation involving The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois book when it arrived a week earlier. Only it was a smaller project which caused less anxiety.

Once I allowed myself to lift Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance out of its box, sit down with a cup of coffee and go through its pages, I reached an important sanity-preserving conclusion. We (Sandra, myself, Clement Alexander Price, and our amazing contributors) had added significantly to the expansion and elevation of conversations surrounding the impact of the renaissance.

Confronting History with History

In the months and years to come, we would take a number of the critical hits which tend to follow the publication of such groundbreaking work. However, important awards, numerous citations, supportive reviews, and further editions would also follow.

"Harlem Renaissance Deja Vu Number 1" artwork by Aberjhani on sale at Fine Art America.com and Pixels.com.

Moreover, the book was published just after the 9-11 Attacks and prior to the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. As such, it helped lay the groundwork for important dialogues addressing both events. Just being mindful of that is one beautifully-satisfying way to celebrate Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance’s 18th birthday. Another is the following:

Documenting the Story of One Book’s Amazing Journey

As I observe this 18th birthday of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, I am very mindful of the fact that my co-author for the title, Sandra L. West, and writer of the foreword, Clement Alexander Price, are now deceased. So is the man who provided us with the book’s epigraph, Ja A. Jahannes. But rather than immerse myself in sorrow over their passing, I am more inclined to acknowledge the enduring radiance with which their spirits and intellect blessed our enterprise. They would be happy to know the book continues to serve as a valuable resource for a new generation of students of the renaissance. Below, in closing, are links to my tributes to them as well as to a few posts on the encyclopedia’s impact thus far:

Tribute to Harlem Renaissance Chronicler Sandra L. West Part 1
Tribute to Harlem Renaissance Chronicler Sandra L. West Part 2

City of Newark Honors Historian Clement Alexander Price

The Wit Wisdom and Genius of Ja A. Jahannes
10th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Text and Meaning in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Part 1
Text and Meaning in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Part 2

On Misconceptions and Alternative Interpretations of a Life

And at this point, now that the Harlem Renaissance Centennial is upon us, my personal Harlem Renaissance journey continues…

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial

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Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

Introduction

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Innovative Literary Vision

Parable of the Sower

For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

Please use this form to contact Author-Artist Aberjhani, or the one below it to comment on this article.

The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 111: Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves (pt. 2 of 2)

Speaking Truth to Your Individual Power

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

Supporting the Process

Contact the Author-Artist at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Turns 18!

Confronting History with History

Documenting the Story of One Book’s Amazing Journey

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

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Categories

Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

Introduction

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Innovative Literary Vision

Parable of the Sower

For More on Octavia E. Butler and California Wildfires

Please use this form to contact Author-Artist Aberjhani, or the one below it to comment on this article.

The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)Author of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCreator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 111: Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves (pt. 2 of 2)

Speaking Truth to Your Individual Power

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

Supporting the Process

Contact the Author-Artist at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Turns 18!

Confronting History with History

Documenting the Story of One Book’s Amazing Journey

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle