Artistically Fly

Fatoumata Sylla made history by becoming the first athlete from Guinea to represent the country in archery at the 2024 Olympic Games. Her participation marks a significant milestone for Guinean sports, highlighting the country's growing presence on the international stage in disciplines beyond its traditional strengths. Sylla's achievement not only showcases her individual talent and dedication but also paves the way for future athletes from Guinea to pursue competitive archery at the highest levels of global sports.

Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890 –1972) was an academic and linguist who conducted seminal research on the Gullah language of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. He earned a master's degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He taught at Howard University (1917-1928) and Fisk University (1929 – 1946) and traveled West Africa, identifying over 300 (Mende, Vai, Fulani) Gullah loanwords and, 4,000 personal names. He published his findings in his book “Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949).

Author Octavia E. Butler Author (1947–2006)

Known for blending science fiction with African-American spiritualism. Her novels include Patternmaster, Kindred, Dawn and Parable of the Sower.

Writer Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947, later breaking new ground as a woman and an African American in the realm of science fiction. Butler thrived in a genre typically dominated by white males. She lost her father at a young age and was raised by her mother. To support the family, her mother worked as a maid.

As a child, Octavia E. Butler was known for her shyness and her impressive height. She was dyslexic, but she didn't let this challenge deter her from developing a love of books. Butler started creating her own stories early on, and she decided to make writing her life's work around the age of 10. She later earned an associate degree from Pasadena City College. Butler also studied her craft with Harlan Ellison at the Clarion Fiction Writers Workshop.

To make ends meet, Butler took all sorts of jobs while maintaining a strict writing schedule. She was known to work for several hours very early in the morning each day. In 1976, Butler published her first novel, Patternmaster. This book would ultimately become part of an ongoing storyline about a group of people with telepathic powers called Patternists. The other related titles are Mind of My Mind (1977), Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984). (Butler's publishing house would later group the works as the Patternist series, presenting them in a different reading order from when they were chronologically published.)

In 1979, Butler had a career breakthrough with Kindred. The novel tells the story of an African-American woman who travels back in time to save a white slave owner—her own ancestor. In part, Butler drew some inspiration from her mother's work. "I didn't like seeing her go through back doors," she once said, according to The New York Times. "If my mother hadn't put up with all those humiliations, I wouldn't have eaten very well or lived very comfortably. So I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure."

For some writers, science fiction serves as means to delve into fantasy. But for Butler, it largely served as a vehicle to address issues facing humanity. It was this passionate interest in the human experience that imbued her work with a certain depth and complexity. In the mid-1980s, Butler began to receive critical recognition for her work. She won the 1984 Best Short Story Hugo Award for "Speech Sounds." That same year, the novelette "Bloodchild" won a Nebula Award and later a Hugo as well.

In the late 1980s, Butler published her Xenogenesis trilogy—Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989). This series of books explores issues of genetics and race. To insure their mutual survival, humans reproduce with aliens known as the Oankali. Butler received much praise for this trilogy. She went on to write the two-installment Parable series—Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998).

In 1995, Butler received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation—becoming the first science-fiction writer to do so—which allowed her to buy a house for her mother and herself.

Me too.

Props to the Babas!
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• Ghana (June 2024, Akwasidae Festival): https://traveling.black/tours/experience-ghana-2024/
• Belize (November 2024, Garifuna Settlement Day): https://traveling.black/tours/experience-belize-2024/
• Cuba (January, 2025, TBA)
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Traveling Black

Congrats Amandla Stenberg. We celebrate your journey from Niobe She is Life to the Acolyte. Proud of you!

Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Nation was honored by for “Women’s Herstory Month” as one of St. Helena Island’s Talented 10. She’s one of the 10 women honored as “Women Who Advocate for Equity Diversity and Inclusion.”

www.QueenQuet.com
www.PennCenter.com
www.GullahGeecheeNation.com