Book Club: Parable of the Sower.

Written by Octavia Butler.

Wow. If you are in the climate advocacy sphere, this book is for you. Doubled-down if you're a spiritual girly. Tripled-down if you're a woman of color.

Parable of the Sower follows the narrative of a young black woman during the coinciding end times of American democracy and climate collapse. Oh, did I mention the story takes place in 2024-2027?? And the elected president, who ran on the promise to return the country to its former state, is named President Donner??? I'm literally not making this up - read it for yourself!!! Really though, what was Octavia Butler smoking back in the 90's when she wrote this book? She clearly had the gift of foresight, and I want in.

All jokes aside, Octavia Butler is a gifted storyteller. Parable of the Sower takes you right to middle class America where suburban communities once hugged by walls are now fortified by walls. Inside are homegrown vegetables, bartering systems, elementary education, church, and armed watch-shifts to protect what is theirs. On the outside is starvation, prostitution, drugs, violence, and desperation. There is a lack of jobs, a lack of government-funded community services, and a breakdown into systemic racial divides. The only guaranteed place for food and shelter is a historical-like return to company-towns where people live in bunkhouses and are overworked and underpaid.

A view of Lowell, Massachusetts in 1910. This town was initially called "The Lowell Experiment" and attracted 16,000 citizens over ten years to work the textile mills along the Merrimack River. This is the first company-town in America. Read about it here.

Right in the middle of this mess is Lauren Olamina. The reader witnesses this young black woman from the ages of fifteen to eighteen-years-old. Lauren has the dangerous liability of hyper empathy, what she describes as "sharing." Through extremely dramatic and painful times, Lauren can feel everything. If she witnesses someone get punched or shot, she feels their pain. If she witnesses someone experiencing pleasure, she feels it too. But what would happen if she watched someone die? Would she die?

The curiosity of Lauren's hyper empathy keeps the reader engaged, yet the plot of the book itself is riveting. The story begins in what feels relatively normal, relatively close to our current lived experience. Quickly, circumstances change, and Lauren is forced to leave home. Many people, similar to the dust-bowl era great depression, are walking hundreds of miles to find work and shelter. Gasoline is scarce and people cannot afford the high price of the rare commodity. The highways are packed with weary travelers. There are terf wars, looting, sexual violence, drug-fueled arsonists, romance, and a dire need to get clean water. All very real, very in the realm of possibility for the actual displacement and end times.

An image from the Great Depression of migrant workers walking to California. Some could say, this was the result of coinciding climate and economic-based migration. Read more here.

The weaving thread of the storyline is Earthseed. Lauren is writing a new religion based on the idea that "God is change." Eloquently strewn between chapters are excerpts from her journal where she believes those that self-identify as Earthseeds can create positive change for the future. Throughout the journey, new characters join Lauren and her crew and reflect on her scriptures from the perspectives of their lived experiences across class and race.

Parable of the Sower has quickly risen to my top five, dare I say, top three favorite books. It perfectly encapsulates how it feels to be so tightly bound to your beliefs in a new world while so deeply pained by the world we see today. A 10/10 read that I highly recommend to anyone remotely connected to me at all.

Sincerely reviewed,

The WickedddBitch of the East

P.S. If you ever feel so inclined to read a book from my recommendation, please support your local book infrastructure. Either ask your library to buy the book so others can enjoy the wisdom too or ask your locally owned bookstore to source it for you. I do not condone the use of mass corporations to learn about healing the earth and humanity. That would be against my values. Cheers.