I recently finished reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents and in the days since I’m finding that while I’m not actively thinking about the story, I’ve not been able to shake it. I feel it sitting in the back of my mind as a presence. I’m not ready to read her other stories but I want to know more about her as well as more background about the Earthseed story. I want to dig around in this thoughtscape. The books were published in the early to mid 1990s and the story timeline in first book begins around 2024. And while the US of 2024 is not as broken down as it is ... beardystarstuff.net

@Denny I highly recommend this as a companion in your deeper exploration of Octavia Butler. Mainly because it not only expands the ideas and themes in her work in general and those to books specifically but how to build upon and apply the lessons therein.

@richnewman I'm sorry. Should be fixed now. It is this: Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds a book by Adrienne Maree Brown

It is very much in line with everything @Denny is thinking about/working out in the post he wrote about the Parables series.

@richnewman @patrickrhone Thanks for fixing the link and for the suggestion! Yes, the author you linked to is one I'm looking into. Have read her and listened/watched her on several videos/podcasts.

Bonus, her book is published by AK Press, one of my favorites!

@Denny I've read this book three times now with heavy highlighting, bookmarking, and notetaking and I still feel like I could use yet another read through. I walk away with new ideas and, well, hope each time I do.

And not a wishy/washy hope based on dreams. No, the hope that comes from knowing we as a species have everything we need to adapt and take action (if we choose to).

@Denny Thanks for writing this! I first heard about Butler through a pagan writer I follow. See here and here. I know you're coming at it from a different perspective than the pagan but the links may be useful to you as reference points for further reading. I haven't read her books but I need to.

@patrickrhone I've added your suggestion to the links in my post. Real-world, action-based hope is what we need.

@jabel Thanks, will check them out!

@Denny Thanks! You can also read my short reviews of it on my Reading page. Here's a relevant piece of one:

But, the whole time I was reading it, it was thrilling. Every few sentences I’d run into an idea that was electric. And the whole time I had the feeling the author is on the cusp of something big. That the idea of Emergent Strategy, once we collectively figure it out, could be the answer to so many things.

@patrickrhone Thanks Patrick, will do!

@Denny, the one line in your post that struck me was:

"I’ve lived my adult life largely in opposition to the dominant social norms and structures I was born into: capitalism, the state, patriarchy - all systems of domination, command and control."

I am claiming the sentence for myself but shortening it:

"I’ve lived my life largely in opposition to the dominant social norms and structures I was born into: all systems of domination, command and control."

@Denny I’m really excited to read this! It’s in my queue for this year. 🙂📚

@khurtwilliams Claim away, nice change!

@Denny @richnewman @patrickrhone I started reading Parable of the Sower exactly one year to the date mentioned at the start of the book at the public library in Pasadena where she grew up. As a 49 year old father of a 12 year old daughter, it was a much more visceral and eerie experience than I could ever have expected. She has forever changed the perspective I have driving down the streets of our shared neighborhood.

I'm not sure if they'll have open remote registrations for it or if it will only be broadcast locally, but the local Octavia Butler Book Club has an upcoming zoom session on Feb 24 which can be found in the Pasadena Public Library's newsletter (.pdf). It will feature Dr. Kendra Parker via Zoom from Georgia to present her lecture: "Walking a Mile in Her Shoes: Exploring Octavia Butler's Archives."

The nearby Huntington Library houses her papers and some of her materials there may be accessible online.

@chrisaldrich I can't quite imagine how that experience would feel. Both the location and also reading such a story as a parent of a young daughter. I realized as I read the story that I am almost the exact age that Bankole was when he and Lauren met on the road...

Thanks for mentioning the event. I'll certainly check it out. In the reading and podcast listening I've done in the past couple days I've heard a couple of young scholars of her work (and founders of the Octavia Butler Legacy Network) discuss her papers being stored at the Huntington Library. It would seem there's a good bit of energy around her work, especially the Parables books.

@Denny been on my to-read list for while, thanks for the reminder.