julietpages – 1

Zaira says, "Hello beautiful women writers. Welcome to Honoring Our Ancestors, the Writer Warriors Workshop series. Thank you for your presence. I'd like to ask all of you to turn to your neighbor, look her in the eyes and say, 'Thank you, sister, for sharing your time and essence'. Juliet says, 'I almost laughed, but the silence and reverence in the room push that laugh back into my chest'. The woman next to me breastfed her baby, such a beautiful and weird thing breastfeeding. The mom held her child with one arm and reached out to me with the other. She said slightly breathless, 'Thank you sister, for sharing your time and essence.' I repeated the blessing holding her hand and her child's hand. Zaira blessed her neighbors on both sides, "Ashe everyone, I'm Zaira Crest, founder of Black Womanists United, and we are here to celebrate the legacy of our sister, Octavia Butler, one of the greatest writers of all time. Octavia gave us worlds caught in post-apocalyptic struggles, narratives billowing with critiques of the way racism and brutality are ingrained in white American society and culture, a culture that we must also navigate and reclaim. Octavia gave us the means to do that via a genre where there are no limits.

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