"I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people"

Octavia Butler's quote speaks to the power of storytelling and its capability to stimulate emotion and understanding. She was not attempting to trace her own ancestry, but rather to use her words to make people feel the pain and suffering of slavery. She wished to convey the emotional and psychological trauma that slavery caused on individuals, and to make them understand the gravity of the circumstance. By doing so, she wished to create a greater understanding of the scaries of slavery and the enduring impacts it had on those who experienced it. Butler's quote is a tip of the power of storytelling and its capability to develop compassion and understanding.