Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, written in 1993, opens on July 20, 2024. I first picked up the book on July 20, 2024 and told myself, this is the perfect time! I’m finally reading this thing!

I read the first page, posted about it on Instagram, felt very proud of myself, then promptly moved on to something else.

Fast forward to early March 2025. Trump has been in office for just over a month. Heartbreak. Despair. I picked up “Parable of the Sower” again and this time I read it cover-to-cover and felt wonder, more despair, more heartbreak, rage, and just pure respect for this stunning achievement of a book.

It was so harrowing. So dark. Reading this just after the LA fires, I noticed everyone online talking about the prescience of the fires, but for me it was almost everything else. The white nationalists in power. Income disparity. The guns! How careless humans can be with their own lives and certainly with the lives of others. How change happens slowly and then all at once. How what you prepare for is never quite the same as what happens but preparing helps nonetheless. Slow activism - is that what NK Jemison called it in her afterword?

How do we fight for tomorrow?