For the love of fantasy and Octavia Butler
An ode to Bitch Media's fantasy issue // Criticizing an old review of Parable of the Sower
The latest issue of Bitch Media’s quarterly print publication begins with editor-in-chief Evette Dionne’s short ode to the Harry Potter series, a head-shake to the problematic author behind it all and a dedication to fill the subsequent pages with affirming, transcendental stories that empower women—especially black women—to invest in the fantastic.
But the fantastic has less to do with wands and magic, says Dionne, and more to do with revolutionary sustainable fashion or the obliteration of our current prison systems for more transformative rehabilitation. There’s a fascinating story about tentacle porn and the comforts of nuanced sexuality it attracts, plus features exposing the beautiful queerness of country music and indie video game designers.
The piece I’ve been thinking about for weeks after first reading the story comes from Mary Retta. Retta writes of “the past, the present and the Afrofuture,” incorporating thoughtful analyses on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower—one of my favorite books and authors of all time—and the prolific Dirty Computer album from Janelle Monae (also a favorite).
“Afrofuturism” was first coined between 1993 and 1994 by white author Mark Dery, who defined it as “speculative fiction that treats African American themes and addresses African American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture.” These days, it’s considered the “reimagining [of] science and the future from a Black perspective.”
In 1986, when asked why she was drawn to science fiction, Butler told The Black Scholar that it’s “potentially the freest genre in existence.”
The most popular names in Afrofuturism as we know it today are women, but it’s essential to note that it took decades before black women began dominating a subgenre of the most male-dominated literary genre of all.
Parable of the Sower in particular, writes Retta, “embodies the precision of Afrofuturism, offering a frighteningly accurate read of the ‘future’ we’re now living in.”
Here’s what I had written about the book when I first read it last February:
—
It’s a quarter past three and I’m just reeling from the end of Butler’s The Parable of the Sower.
What was meant to be a short 30 minutes of reading while fueling with iced white tea and a slice of day-old spinach focaccia turned into a daydream-like fixation on Earthseed, a Darwinian religion developed by Butler’s “Parable” protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina set in a dystopian 2024 California.
Global warming is doing its deed. Drought, loss of drinkable water, displaced populations. The pharma industry still prospers, of course. A smart “pyro” drug makes watching fires burn feel even better than sex, resulting in pyromanic addicts chasing the high, leaving the world’s few existing walled communities up in flames as they fade to black.
Perhaps the most gripping aspect of the book is that our protagonist suffers from what she calls hyper-empathy. A “sharer” in Butler’s world, Lauren feels the pain and pleasure she causes. In no way does Lauren, through her character, make a good case for the value of this disease of empathy. She shows us the evils. Shoots and only jumps from the jolt, if she’s lucky and her victim is dead. She feels the pain of being raped and the pleasure of her rapist. And she exposes the way weak, colored men and women with the disease are used as obedient slaves by racist masters. Yes, racism, of course, makes a more concrete comeback.
Lauren’s primary motive to live, to survive is Earthseed. Earthseed, in essence, is a religion worshipping evolution and change as the only worthy deity. God, Lauren believes, is change.
“God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.”
Butler, as The New Yorker wrote in 2017, birthed the Parable series from what she read in the news, “forecasting what kind of collapse might result if the forces of late-stage capitalism, climate change, mass incarceration, big pharma, gun violence, and the tech industry continued unhampered.”
Dispiriting, I know. But there’s something warm about Lauren’s perspective, told through her diary entries: her hope for better. “There is no end to what a living world will demand of you,” Butler writes. “I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
Butler wanted to write four more books after “Parable of the Talent,” but found the task “too depressing.”
The Parable series, she urged the public, was not about prophecy. No, “this was a cautionary tale,” she said.
“Your teachers
Are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you
or taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear
Will teach you--
If you will learn.
God is your first
and your last teacher.
God is your harshest teacher:
subtle,
demanding.
Learn or die.”
—
I’m struck by this phrase in particular from my 2019 review: “Yes, racism, of course, makes a more concrete comeback.”
I find it flippant and dismissive though I know in my heart that was never intended, but I don’t believe intentions mean a thing if never confronted.
Butler’s Parable may center environmental issues as complementary to systemic injustice, but racism has been concrete all along, melted into the grounds we walk on, the buildings we grow in and the statues we fight to take down. To say it’s making a concrete comeback suggests there was a point at which racism dimmed, and that is a direct reflection of my privilege as a Western South Asian Muslim woman whose parents now belong to a high-income bracket.
Thank you to Bitch Magazine for reminding me to revisit one of the best books I’ve ever read. And for the reminder to check my privilege.
If you’re new to the genre, Donyae Coles of Wear Your Voice recently published this great list of Afrofuturism literature that offers a raw visual representation of societal distress and progress by centering blackness. And Jonita Davis wrote an excellent feature on how black women are reshaping Afrofuturism for Yes Magazine.
I’ll be finishing the Parable series soon. Then onto N.K. Jemison’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
—fiza
A big hug to paying subscribers Sam Kruger, Arielle Lewitt and Salima Makhani.