It feels as if our present has been written into existence by Octavia E. Butler. From ecological collapse, to the pandemic, to nationalistic political campaign slogans, the predictive powers of the author’s speculative fiction have spun stories into source text. In Octavia’s most widely-read books, Parable of the Sower and its sequel Parable of the Talents, we follow the journey of Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old girl living in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. After a devastating attack on her family compound, Lauren is able to not only survive, but to seed the beginnings of a different world. Lauren’s fixation with shaping a more adaptable, interdependent, and ecologically sustainable future is a result of what Octavia calls a positive obsession. It is this positive obsession, one that sees survival as something tied up in ecological and communal solidarity, that has informed MOLD’s own perspective on what the future can be.
As we approach July 20, 2024 —the start date of Parable of the Sower— we are launching a new editorial series revisiting the text. As the timescales of fiction and reality collapse, it is now more clear than ever that Parable of the Sower is a directive against the inertia of “unprecedented times.” It comes as a much-needed reminder that the conditions of our existence are not a sentence, but rather, a medium — supple, resilient, open to reimagination — one whose malleability is dependent upon our own relationship to change. This leads us to a question first posed by adrienne maree brown in her book Emergent Strategy that has become central to this series: how do we get in right relationship with change? Within Parable of the Sower, Octavia provides us with an alternative ethic for navigating change through The Book of the Living, the religious text for Earthseed, a fictional religion founded by Lauren in the book. Truisms from the book such as “All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” Across the next month we will highlight the stories of farmers, healers, and scholars who share how the lessons presented in the Parable series have governed how they shape change, cultivating food sovereign futures in their practices and communities.
Across the novel, Lauren seeks teachers in the natural, more-than-human world. As she develops an emergent strategy for survival, being in relation with the land is the crux of her vision for the future. For this series, we delve into how this relationship can inform how we choose to navigate ever-unfolding change. We begin with a piece from industrial designer, educator, and longtime MOLD contributor Lily Saporta Consuelo Tagiuri, who reflects on seed-saving as a tool for mediating disaster. In the face of the unknown, Lily examines how Octavia’s strategies for survival might be used as a blueprint for navigating rupture and the grief that comes with it.
Stephen Reid, the assistant curator and head gardener of the rose garden at Huntington Library, where Octavia’s archives are stored, writes about gardening in Los Angeles as an act of hope in the face of climate pessimism and ambivalence. LinYee Yuan, editor for MOLD, speaks with Khalil Griffith of Seattle’s Beacon Food Forest who traces his participation in building a more resilient food system to reading Parable of the Sower.
Core to Parable of the Sower are the models of collectivity that Lauren shapes Earthseed and Acorn around. As shakara tyler, co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund (DBFLF) and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC), writes in reference to abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Freedom is a place we actively make.” In her piece, shakara reflects on how Octavia’s world-building, has helped midwife utopian possibilities in her own practice.
To accompany this series, MOLD will be hosting a Parable of the Sower bookclub this fall centered around each piece from this editorial series. Get a copy of the book from an independent book seller or from your local library for your summer reading and follow along with us as we dwell in the portals of potential offered to us through the Earthseed.
With gratitude,
Isabel
