Read this when
Parable of the Sower
'All that you touch / You Change.' Butler wrote a 2024 climate collapse in 1993, and a hero who feels everyone's pain and keeps going anyway.
Who it's for
Lauren, a teenage diarist, sees clearly that her walled neighborhood won't hold while adults cling to the past, which validates readers who feel alone in their dread about climate or social collapse.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Octavia E. Butler's 1993 novel is the journal of Lauren Olamina, an African American teenager living in 2024 in Robledo, a walled community near Los Angeles, as society collapses under climate change and inequality. Lauren has hyperempathy, an uncontrollable sharing of the sensations, especially pain, that she witnesses in others.
Where to find it
In print (Grand Central); widely available from libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an audiobook; a graphic-novel adaptation exists (Duffy and Jennings). Not public domain.
Before you start
Heads up: Rape and the murder of a child.
Age: Ages 16+
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.Matthew 6:34, Matthew 6:34
