Telling our story

Octavia Estelle Butler.

I'm careful to describe her in any other way than her own:

"I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial—a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles—a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”

I'm also careful to define her Parable Series (Parable of the Sower, 1993 and Parable of the Talents, 1998) as anything other than cautionary. In fact a growing number of Butler's fans and opinion writers might also agree. The dissemination of think pieces titled "Parable of the Sower -- Not 1984 -- Is The Dystopian For Our Age" and tweets surfacing like "A black sci-fi author predicted Donald Trump's campaign slogan 16 years ago" affirm. This two-part futuristic tale of a woman who finds a divine buffer between her disillusioned countryman and bigoted government, amidst an environmental and economic collapse, forces you to confront our present-day. You cannot help but feel the freezing wind around you. Huntington Library assistant curator Natalie Russell explains Butler's rare gift: "What’s striking is her ability to tease out and focus on issues that have had and likely will have currency for decades. She was amazingly prescient and given that, her stories resonate in very powerful ways today. Perhaps even more so than when they were first published.” 

Yet again I'm careful. I'm careful to recommend these books solely because of the similarities of fictional presidential candidates and real-life ones who become presidents of the United States—which many will continue to point out. Much deeper, the series grapples humanity and self-identity. And as much as it successfully does this, it also shines light on the equalities not fully granted in the society we live in. Perhaps what Butler truly wanted us to extract from her Parable Series is a sense of optimism and an undying obsession with these societal and environmental issues. In this series you realize the subtle equalities of the people trapped in this dystopia America, suggesting how things ought to be with or without societal chaos: a woman who can take lead of her community and not be questioned on the basis of gender; people who can care for each other's children across race; a society that does not limit the ranking of a person based on the color of their skin (literally not even within a Fascist regime); and a society that does not inhibit fluidity across gender and sexuality preference.  

What are you waiting for? Go read Octavia Butler's work now.