Octavia E. Butler’s seminal text Parable of the Sower was first published in 1993 and is set in the 2020s. The world is suffering from an economic crisis, environmental catastrophes, unemployment, mass poverty, corporate greed, and widespread drug addiction. Oh, and there’s the incompetent President Donner. He wants to dismantle government programs, bring back jobs (though he never specifies how he proposes to do that), and make America great again. He uses this phrase explicitly in the sequel, Parable of the Talents, and the resemblance—especially the name—is uncanny. Although published more than 20 years ago, this novel still strikes me as being a prescient warning against a future that seems all too possible.
We follow the life of protagonist Lauren Olamina, a young black woman living on the outskirts of what remains of Los Angeles. When a fire destroys her gated neighbourhood, Lauren’s family and much of her community is killed. She is forced to navigate the frenzied outside world and find her way to safety up North. Lauren is astute, observant, and extremely intelligent. Her learnings through intense reading, and critical scrutiny of the religion she was born into, lead her to create a new faith: Earthseed.
Earthseed becomes a unifying force between Lauren and those she meets on her journey. While many are skeptical of Earthseed, there is a recognition that survival can only occur in communities, and that communities are often brought together by a shared culture or belief system. Lauren criticises Christianity, particularly the Baptist Church, for encouraging passivity.
The novel begs us to question what sort of God would watch what is happening on Earth and allow it to continue. The scriptures that are supposed to inform morality are being ignored by everyone, including the government that claims to be founded on Christian values. Simultaneously, commandments such as ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not kill’ seem reasonable, but in a society where people constantly have to defend themselves physically and often steal to survive, these words carry little weight.
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Self-defense shouldn’t have to be an agony or a killing or both. I can be crippled by the pain of a wounded person. I’m a very good shot because I’ve never felt that I could afford to just wound someone… The worst of it is, if you got hurt, I might not be able to help you. I might be crippled by your injury—by your pain, I mean—as you are.
– Excerpt from Parable of the Sower
In the novel, Lauren’s late mother was one of the millions of people addicted to a drug named Paraceto. Children born to parents using this drug are at risk of developing a type of psychological disorder known as hyperempathy. Hyperempaths, or ‘sharers’ as they are called, experience both the pain and pleasures of others. If a sharer witnesses someone get punched, they will feel the force and pain of that punch. If they see someone get stabbed, same thing. In a violent world, hyperempathy is debilitating—it makes sharers incredibly vulnerable to the will of others. It kills.
But in a more humane world, I can imagine that if we were all hyperempathetic (or even just empathetic) perhaps we’d treat one another better. You can’t help but wonder how Lauren, or the other sharers, would treat people if they didn’t have hyperempathy. Would they be more likely to be violent if they didn’t feel the violence they subjected others to? Do you have to know a pain not to wish it upon another?
I can’t help but wonder what decisions would be made by those in power if they, too, physically felt the consequences of their actions.
In Butler’s new Amerikkka, a new form of slavery has arisen as a result of modern capitalism. In the crumbling world, food and water are in short supply and, consequently, are ridiculously expensive.
Millions are living in poverty, and rich folk are making money off the starving by hiking up the prices while also privatising natural resources, further limiting common peoples’ access. With basic necessities like food, water, clothes and shelter being inaccessible, most people are struggling to stay alive. In this ‘fictional’ world, if you are behind on your bills, you have the option to “work off your debt” in factories or workhouses. Millions migrate to cities to work in poor conditions for a low wage, under the premise that their debt will be lifted. But these factories will never pay wages high enough for people to pay off their debts. Why would they? Better to maintain a cheap labour force. These workers are technically ‘indentured labourers’, but without proper remuneration for their labour and without the choice to leave until their infinite debt is repaid, they are effectively slaves.
I have read various narrow-minded reviews saying that the chaos of Octavia’s world is unbelievable, as if:
- science fiction has ever had to adhere to the rules of reality
- a world in which poor people of colour are financially abused and exploited on a national scale is a difficult thing to believe.
Butler’s fictional reality is an extrapolation based on our current world. Though hyperbolic, this reality does not seem unreasonable when I look at the current state of the world.
Many of those enslaved share something with our protagonist Lauren: they all have hyperempathy, making them the ideal workers in the eyes of their masters. Knowing that they will feel the pain of another, a group of sharers is less likely to rebel if they believe they will be met with violence. With a whole factory or plantation of sharers, masters don’t have to worry about an uprising. If one person rebels and gets shot, everyone feels the bullet. There is so much to be said about this; endless unpacking to be done about hyperempathy and how forms of hyperempathy play out in our day-to-day life. I can’t tell you how long I have been reflecting on this metaphor.
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As bell hooks writes in her 1993 book Sisters of the Yam, and as many Black and Indigenous peoples around the world know:
When the earth is sacred to us, our bodies can also be sacred to us.
The way that the ‘united states’ and countless other Western nations have exploited and violated the lands they have invaded, stolen, and colonised is not only indicative of how they treat the First Nations people of that land, but of the general lack of respect that underpins and governs Western culture. In Butler’s ‘dystopia’ (I’m hesitant to refer to it as that), the link between the environmental crises and social injustice is too clear. Parable reminds us that the health of all people can only improve when we respect our earth, and the health of the earth can only improve when we respect all people.
In 1998 while talking about science fiction at MIT, Butler said “this was not a book about prophecy; this was an if-this-goes-on story”. Two decades later, this book still seems prophetic; obviously we still have a lot of work to do.
Parable of the Sower is a must read for those who love dystopian fiction and speculative fiction. Octavia Butler, a pioneer of Afrofuturism, the matriarch of black sci-fi, is one of the most subversive, eloquent, and engrossing authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
I’m trying to speak — to write — the truth. I’m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.
– Excerpt from Parable of the Sower
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Related resources you might like to check out:
- Clockshop’s Radio Imagination podcast: “Radio Imagination celebrates the life and work of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Organized by Clockshop, the 2016 program centers on 10 commissions that explore Butler’s papers at the Huntington Library.”
- How to Survive the End of the World podcast: “Learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigour and curiosity.” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article about the ‘moral debts’ that must be paid by Amerikkka, and in it he explains some of the history behind debt peonage.
- A transcript of the conversation about sci-fi between Butler and interviewer Jenkins at MIT in 1998.
- An essay Butler wrote based on her opening remarks at MIT in 1998: “This was not a book about prophecy.”
All images © The Negro Speaks of Books
About the author
Reading and discussing books by Authors of Colour here in Narrm, on unceded Wurundjeri land.