Book Review: Parable of the Sower

Here’s my book review for Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too. And check out today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler is a book that has forever changed me and is one of those books that I will encourage everyone to read multiple times, likely for the rest of my life. Though it was originally published in 1993, its narrative (told via journal entries of a hyper empathetic girl who grows into a strong young woman over the course of the novel) spans from 2024 to 2027. And it is both alarming and awe-inspiring how prescient everything in the novel is, as if Butler really wrote this book to be more than a book of warning about what was to come when she wrote it in the early 90s, but a spiritual guidebook of sorts to span all epochs. 

Truly, Parable of the Sower is much more than a novel, as it outlines its very own practical existential spiritual and moral philosophy and religion with protagonist Lauren Olamina’s Earthseed writings and teachings. Unpacking Earthseed could necessitate the length of a book, or multiple books, yet is also beautifully simple at the same time (which is highlighted by Olamina’s love interest, Bankole, in the novel too). Earthseed essentially posits that God is Change and that we influence Change as much as it influences us. Please read the Earthseed excerpts in the novel slowly and carefully, and you will not be disappointed. Even if they don’t make a lot of sense at first, reread them until they start to make a little more sense. They encompass traditional spiritual teachings too. For instance, when considering the title of the novel and the various Earthseed excerpts, I can’t stop thinking about the Christian idiom “You reap what you sow” which is also similar to many karmic teachings, which is similar to other religious teachings…

The edition I read of the novel was published in 2023 and has a Reading Group Guide in the back. In the section of the Guide called A Conversation with Octavia E. Butler, Butler is asked: What would you like readers to get from this novel? What would you like them to think about? To which she responds: “I hope people who read Parable of the Sower will think about where we seem to be heading—we the United States, even we the human species. Where are we going? What sort of future are we creating? Is it the kind of future you want to live in? If it isn’t, what can we do to create a better future? Individually and in groups, what can we do?” (p. 347) 

So, as you read Parable of the Sower, please make it a point to sincerely ask yourself if we’re headed in the same direction its characters are headed in, and whether that’s where you want to go too? 

Do you want to contribute to a world literally falling apart due to the effects of climate change? Where there are company towns instead of cities, kid cannibals, illiterate people of all ages sold into debt slavery or addicted to drugs that make them destroy everything with fire, police officers who only work for fees, refugees turning on one another to survive, rampant hunger and scarce potable water, and where losing loved ones is more likely to happen than not? 

Or do you want to contribute to a world in which empathy isn’t a weakness but a strength, where communities thrive, and people look out for one another against all odds? 

Though this novel is vivid and brutal in its portrayal of what human beings can really do to one another when they are lost and scared and desperate and hungry and weak, it also beautifully portrays what human beings can do when they have real conversations and deliberations and care for one another. And that human beings can and will plant their dead in the earth with some acorn seeds and start new life together if and where they want to do so, as they venture to take root among the stars. 

This novel is one that should be read by many for years and years to come. Please go read it, especially since it starts in the year 2024 and is timelier now than it has ever been before.  

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Today’s Writing Prompt