Parable of the Talents

“Did she struggle for life only out of habit, or because some part of her still hoped that there was something worth living for?”

I started reading Octavia Butler with Kindred. A true tour de force that is upsetting and moving all at the same time (FX canceling the show after one season is a crime!). I am not a huge sci-fi fan (one of the few interests I didn’t inherit from my mom like baking and crafting), but I read some post a few years ago begging white feminists to stop recommending The Handmaids Tale as the authoritative dystopian novel. Instead, the post recommended Octavia Butler’s Parable series citing its similarities to the current issues in society. Butler wrote the novels in the 90’s to include issues from climate change, new strands of narcotics effecting the middle class, late stage capitalism, violent fundamentalist Christians and a strong man president with the slogan “Make America Great Again.”  It feels like Butler, often referred to as “the mother of Afrofuturism”, reached into a crystal ball and predicted the way that society would go, almost down to the date with the first novel beginning in 2024. But why should we read a dystopian novel when we are currently living it?

So what had happened was…

In the first book, Parable of the Sower, Lauren  Oya Olamina is a teenager being raised in a relatively middle class town. In her time the definition for middle class has shifted as the US has entered a spiral wherein money and education are scarce, but what is plentiful are roving gangs and drug addiction which are terrorizing society. Her middle class town is attacked by a group addicted to a new drug that makes fire intoxicating. She barely escapes with her life and finds only 2 other members of her community. They decide to escape to northern California where there are rumors of safety (the symbolism of escaping to the North similar to a slave narrative is palpable).

On her way north she encounters various difficulties, many of which are due to her having hyperempathy- a disease which plagues the children of drug addicts with feeling others’ pain and sometimes pleasure. But in this time, pain is much more common amongst Americans. Each mile north is hard earned and often blood stained, but Lauren begins to recruit people to join her on her journey and follow her new religion, Earthseed.  Lauren’s father was a Baptist preacher, but she has moved away from Abrahamic religion (despite her similarities to Moses). She now believes in an unthinking and unfeeling deity that forms and is to be formed; her God is change. Lauren eventually makes it to Northern California to a small homestead owned by a lover she met on her journey and the first book ends with hope.

This hope is briefly carried into the second and final book in the series as Earthseed begins to grow (including her brother Marc who she thought had died in the attack on her home). The community is stable, winning new converts, Lauren gets married and has her first child. However, America has continued to spiral. There is now a violent fundamentalist Christian group called Christian America who are performing a 21st Century version of the witch hunts. Christian America attacks Lauren’s community and enslaves them. Lauren’s husband is killed and the children of the community are taken to be raised by “good Christian families.” The community is enslaved using collars which control a person by inducing pain levels just below killing them. During their occupation- which includes forced labor, rape, and murder- Christian America begins to believe that the Earthseed religion worships trees and force the community to cut down all the trees. This ends up being their downfall as a mudslide hits the community due to the lack of tree roots. The community escapes as the control panel for the collars is broken during the mudslide.

After attaining her freedom, Lauren attempts to find her child, but eventually pivots to restarting Earthseed. This time not as a single community, but rather something more amorphous. She gets in with the upper crust of American society and Earthseed begins to grow like it never did before. She never stops looking for her child and eventually meets her, now going by Asha Vere. She learns that Asha was given to a Christian America family that abused Asha, but Lauren’s brother Marc found her and provided for her. However, Marc was only able to find and provide for Asha through him becoming a famous preacher within Christian America. Lauren is unable to forget what Christian America did during her enslavement and unable to forgive her brother for never getting a message to her that her daughter was alive. The second book ends again with a hard fought hope as Lauren never becomes close to her daughter, but on her death bed sees her biggest dream come true: Earthseed growing beyond this planet and establishing a community among the stars.

Aiight so boom…

This got me really thinking on Afro-futurism and where this series is placed within the genre. As I said, sci-fi isn’t really my thing, when I think of Afro-futurism I think more about Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelics, Janelle Monae and Big Krit.  But try to think of the times in media that Black folks are represented in the future/science fiction. Did you get to your second hand? The biggest and best example I could think of was Wakanda. An advanced society that builds off of an imaginative representation of African splendor and genius. The feeling of the Wakandan heroes is much different than that of Lauren. Lauren’s world is grounded in racism, patriarchy and failing capitalism which is far more familiar than the miracles of heart shaped herb or vibranium. I think both literary reactions are valid. One reaction is to create a new world in which our Blackness does not hinder us. The other reaction, the reaction taken in the parable series, is to acknowledge the hindrances of our current reality, but ensure that we are still the heroes. Each book ends in Lauren being a savior, but does not hide the pain that she had to go through to get there. A Black woman, the child of an addict, a survivor of rape, and formerly enslaved person,  becomes a prophet leading her people off of this failing planet and into the stars. This science fiction based in something much closer our current reality seems far more empowering to me than the story of a reality that we could have only hoped for. A reality in which we do not need to reimagine history in order for us to be the saviors of our future.