Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

I’ve had many lessons, and I’m better at flying than I used to be. Not a very subtle image, but a persistent one. I’m just learning on my own, little by little, dream lesson by dream lesson. I think I need to write about the dream because this particular lie bothers me so much. So last night, I dreamed a reminder that it’s all a lie.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to please him-him and the community and God. Today is our birthday-my fifteenth and my father’s fifty-fifth. It comes to me when I try to be my father’s daughter. It comes to me when I struggle-when I twist on my own personal hook and try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. P RODIGY IS, AT ITS essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale” and includes a foreword by N.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler