For once I’m actually ahead with reading for bookclub, it’s July 27th and I already have the August book finished. Granted, it is one I’ve read before, Parable of the Sower by the fantastic Octavia E. Butler. I read it last year in fact for my 50 Books by Authors of Color project last year.
Reading Parable of the Sower for a second time really let me get into the story and realize really how distressing the world she creates is. I actually loved reading it a second time just for the world building. Butler manages to create this beautifully tragic dichotomy, where life as people knew it is crumbling and people are one mistake away from death at all time, and yet people manage to grow, to change, to fall in love.
It amuses me, that most of the events in the book take place between 2025 and 2027, which is only 13 years away. While I’d like to think things will be “better” by then, I can’t help but wonder and worry. As an adult I look at the parallels between Lauren’s existence in Parable of the Sower and our own, it’s interesting to see that the problems that exist in her world, exist in ours.
It is hard to believe that a book published twenty years ago could ring so true today.
