Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

It’s 2052 in Los Angeles. The setting of this novel is much like the one we see in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”; resources are scarce, there is a large division between the rich and the poor, and world has become increasingly violent.
Francie is 19 years old and lives with her Auntie Annie and her aunt’s boyfriend, Rohn, who make deliveries on the black market for a living. Francie’s parents died of a disease when she was just a little girl. In the beginning of the story Rohn disappears while on a delivery with Annie and Francie. He tries to illegally purchase water from Max the Magician. Annie and Francie are unsure of what has happened to Rohn but they believe he might have been arrested. Francie’s aunt has a hard time coping with his loss, and we see her begin to slip into a state of hopelessness. She starts to gain weight, not care about her appearance, ultimately becoming lazy. On the other hand, Francie quickly gets over his disappearance because she feels it is useless to grieve; there are other things that need to be done besides to continue worrying.
Francie’s plants represent her Auntie Annie in a strange way. When Annie’s source of hope, Rohn, is gone Francie becomes frustrated with her constantly grieving aunt and describes her garden as a complete mess. “I wanted to rip them out by their roots and be done with them. I watered and fed them instead,” she says. She begins to take care of her plants like never before around the time when she explains her concern for her aunt when she leaves to search for Rohn.
Already we begin to see that hope is a major theme throughout this novel. Despite the chaotic world around her, Francie has never-ending hope for the future much like Lauren in Parable of the Sower. Shortly after Rohn’s disappearance when Francie was making a delivery, she is hit by a care leaving her hospitalized for 5 weeks. Following her long hospital stay, Francie gets an itch to do something different with her life. Feeling the need to do something, she decides to go back to college and move out. Also, around this point in the novel her aunt makes the decision to move out of the bungalow her, Francie, and Rohn once lived in as a family. We see a parallel relationship between her aunt and Francie’s plants again. Francie sells her plants saying, “Even my plants sometimes began to seem inert rather than full of life. I still loved them, but I needed a vacation from their demands.” It is time for Francie to move on and begin a life of her own. She has to get away from her aunt just as she does her plants because they may be holding her down. It will be interesting to see where Francie’s unusual sense of hope will take her.

Octavia Estelle Butler Biography
Octavia E. Butler was an only child born June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father, Laurice, worked as a shoeshine man, while her mother, Octavia M. worked as a maid. Her father died when she was young; therefore Octavia was raised by her mother and grandmother. Octavia grew up in a very racially mixed neighborhood and was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. She also grew up in a strict Baptist household. At the age of 12, Octavia first got into writing science fiction after seeing the film “Devil Girl from Mars”. Though she was shy as a child, Octavia overcame her shyness and received her associate degree from Pasadena City College in 1963. She then pursued her education at California State University in Los Angeles and then at UCLA. One of Octavia’s most inspiring workshops was with Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1970, which soon followed her first novel, “Crossover”. Butler’s most popular novel was “Kindred” which was published in 1976. “Kindred” was about a black woman who goes back in time to slavery before the Civil War. In 1995 Octavia E. Butler became the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. Butler moved to Seattle, Washington in 1999. Octavia went through a writers block during after writing the first two novels in the Parable series. In 2005 she published a novel “Fledgling” which helped her to get back on track with a third and last of the Parable trilogy. Unfortunately due to her early death after falling off the stairs in her house and striking her head she was not able to finish her novel. Butler achieved many awards in her lifetime for her writings, including two Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. However, Butler was mostly known for exposing readers to the injustices of society through her metaphors in her science fiction novels. More so than what she shared through her writing, Butler was also a pioneer in a field dominated by white male writers. As a result of this, a scholarship fund was established to help writers of color to attend one of Clarion workshops, where she was inspired and got started.

Octavia E. Butler Bibliography :
In 1974, she started the novel Patternmaster, which became her first published book in 1976, though it would become the fifth in the Patternist series. Over the next eight years, she would publish four more novels in the same story line, though the publication dates of the novels do not match the internal order of the series.
• Wild Seed (1980)
• Mind of my Mind (1977)
• Clay’s Ark (1984)
• Survivor (1978)
• Patternmaster (1976)
In 1979, she published Kindred, a novel that uses the science-fiction staple of time travel to explore slavery in the United States. In this story, Dana, an African American woman, is inexplicably transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early nineteenth century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, an African American woman who was born free but forced into slavery later in life.
• Kindred (1979)
Next came Lilith’s Brood, formerly Xenogenesis, novels which are available separately or collected in one volume. They tell the story of the human survivors of an apocalyptic war as they are joined and genetically altered by extraterrestrials that have an affinity for strangers.
• Dawn (1987)
• Adulthood Rites (1988)
• Imago (1989)
And the two collected versions of all three novels:
• Xenogenesis (Hard cover, 1989)
• Lilith’s Brood (Trade Paperback, 2000)
Next came the two Parable novels. These take readers into the world of economic, environmental, and social chaos that we seem to be creating, and they offer a few solutions, both malignant and benign.
• Parable of the Sower (1993)
• Parable of the Talents (1998)
She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in the 2005 novel, Fledgling, a vampire novel with a science-fiction context. Although Butler herself passed Fledgling off as a lark, the novel is connected to her other works through its exploration of race, sexuality, and what it means to be a member of a community. Moreover, the novel continues the theme, raised explicitly in Parable of the Sower, that diversity is a biological imperative.
• Fledgling (2005)
And finally, there is a book of short fiction and essays including title story, Bloodchild, Speech Sounds, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and others.
• Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

“In the Heart of the Valley of Love” takes place in a similar setting as that of “The Parable of the Sower.” Francie, the story’s main character, lives in Los Angeles in the 2050’s, a place where crime, violence, and poverty have become the norm throughout most of the United States. Water and gasoline are rationed, education is poor, and fresh food is expensive and difficult to come by. The rich and poor are segregated, as the upper class white live in what is known as “Richtown,” and the poor non-whites live outside of its walls. In general, the world seems to be in chaos. In contrast to Octavia Butler’s novel, Cynthia Kadohata makes the setting around her characters a mere backdrop, her focus being the character’s emotions. Amongst these emotions, as indicated by the title of the book, love and hope are the core to Kadohata’s novel.
The relationships presented in the novel have become integral to the plot. Every character encountered thus far has, in one form or another, a significant other. The book starts with Auntie Annie and Rohn taking Francie with them on their deliveries. Rohn is only Auntie’s second boyfriend and she is deeply in love with him. Auntie Annie is Francie’s caregiver so naturally this relationship has become an aspiration for Francie.
Jewel, a coworker of Francie at the school newspaper, has a boyfriend named Teddy. Teddy is abusive to Jewel and Francie first meets him after getting out of jail, but nonetheless, Jewel is in love with him. While Francie personally does not like Teddy, she aspires to what they have: each other. Similarly, Emmy and Hank, Jewel’s parents, have a strange relationship. They seem to almost ignore one another, but in Francie’s eyes, they are also in love. Jewel comments that they haven’t had sex in years, but Francie sees something different: “I thought they did have sex, in a slightly ashamed way ashamed not because of how much they didn’t want each other but because of how much they did.” Francie’s recognition of their need for one another, despite their actions towards each other, alludes to the idea that Francie herself is ready to accept love.
When Francie decides to take some classes at a local community college, she meets a boy named Mark. Mark works for the school newspaper and they quickly become boyfriend and girlfriend. It is too early to tell if they are in love, but the dominant theme about the need and importance of love leaves the reader predicting (and hoping) that this will work out for Francie.
Hope and love go hand in hand in the early stages of this novel. The scene where Francie, Mark, and Jewel celebrate Easter with Rohn’s relatives sticks out in my mind. Francie did not want to go, but went along for the respect she has for Rohn. The setting is described as annoying: a little girl is waving an egg in Francie’s face, a woman is playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on a guitar. But Francie says, “So what were we all doing there? It was just that my aunt had fallen in love with Rohn, and Rohn’s sister and her husband had fallen in love, and his parents had once been in love, and so on. That’s why I was standing there watching Alma wave an Easter egg in my face.” Francie wants to believe, and has hope, in the possibility of love, but she does not have it yet, leaving her alone and annoyed. This excerpt not only shows just how much hope she has for love and a better way of life for everyone around her, but that she wants it for herself too. It is going to be interesting to see where this hope leads and if, ultimately, it leads Francie to finding love.

Religion: A Distraction or Necessity?

Throughout history, religion has always played a crucial role in the lives of most people in a functioning society. To most individuals religion provides extended moral structure, as well as hope for the afterlife. Nearly all religions have some type of book or scriptures to help define these processes and sets of rules that are to be followed; many of these “hard copies” were written thousands of years ago, but are still perceived just as literally as the day they were written. In both the Parable of the Talents, as well as today’s society, I believe that the use of religion presents a distraction—or attempt at mild brainwashing—which helps to take people’s minds away from the real problems that are going on around us. Although this does not fit the public’s accepted view of religions, I still feel that most religions were originally founded to provide a false sense of security, while also helping leaders gain better control of their citizen’s behavior. After reading the Parable of Talents I notice that Octavia Butler shares similar viewpoints; we notice this by examining how Butler portrays Lauren and President Jarrett’s use of religion and its effect on others. Butler seems use a deteriorating society to exaggerate these present day misconceptions in religion.

In Parable of Talents society seems to be in an exaggerated state of chaos although many characteristics mirror the early stages of serious problems in today’s society. This type of exaggerated setting allows Butler to easily and accurately examine how religion is oftentimes used to distract society from the important issues that should be resolved. In the novel, Butler never really provides specific reasoning for Lauren’s need to start Earthseed, as well as to why she continues to dream about the need for its growth. This illustrates that Lauren might care so much about Earthseed because it provides a much needed distraction from the daily chaos. Chaos has surrounded Lauren her whole life, which may explain why she shows the need to pursue Earthseed with such determination. In many cases, we see this happening in today’s culture as well. For example many people feel satisfied by strictly following the words of the bible, but in reality they are losing sight of the actual economical and political problems that are sometimes more important. Religion may also become a distraction by providing a false sense of security. We see this first hand when Lauren is so caught up in her Earthseed community that it “forces” her to refuse a safe refuge for her elderly husband and their new bourn child. Lauren likes the way that Earthseed provides her with a sense of accomplishment, as well as a self esteem boost from her followers; but because of this she decides there is no way she can abandon her Earthseed community. However, in reality she should have been concentrating on survival before religion. This concept is also seen in today’s society with people who feel their life is complete just because they follow the word of the lord.

President Jarrett also uses religion as an obsolete solution for nearly every problem in their chaotic society. It is obvious that Jarrett is an extremist, but people start to believe that forced Christianity might be the only answer since conditions continue to worsen and no other options seem plausible. Extremists like Jarrett will always exist within any religion; this creates a problem since so many people will follow the orders of religious icon just because every part of a person’s life is structured on that religion. We obviously notice that extremists like Jarrett use the framework of a religion in a manipulative way, far from its original context. Nevertheless, the followers are distracted by religion as a whole, and fail to see the propaganda they are being fed. We see this through Jarrett’s manipulative speeches that result in a “cult-like” following. These “Crusaders,” as they are called, claim that they are fighting, killing, and torturing for the goodness of Christianity. This same type of blindness is seen throughout society today, especially through Jihad (a movement to kill all infidels who do not follow Islam) in the Muslim community. The ruthless individuals who pursue this Jihad show definite similarities to Jarrett’s crusaders. Both of these groups are similar because they use their own perception of religion to distract themselves from the wrongful injustices in which they involve themselves. Religion is always portrayed to be necessary in most societies, but can actually do more harm than expected if every part of our lives become concerned with religion. I feel this is why Butler chose religion to play an essential underlying theme in her The Parable of Talents.

In the novel, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, the characters and other inhabitants of the future United States face an all too familiar world of little access to essential resources. This world in which it is difficult to obtain an income, food, and adequate medical care is not all that foreign if compared to today’s society. Today, those who are not on the top of the social class hierarchy deal with limited access almost daily. They fight to obtain a job in which will pay enough for them to get out of debt, they struggle to obtain healthy foods (without having to travel long distances), and they attempt to gain adequate and affordable healthcare and justice. This is exactly the picture that Butler paints in her novel, except that instead of only affecting the poor, it sweeps the country on a large scale, making a full life even more difficult to obtain.

            One of the first and most obvious things that the characters in Butler’s world do not have is access to money. The only money they are able to obtain is by either stealing or by taking money from the dead. If any characters are able to hold a job, it usually does not pay enough for them to support a family or to buy necessities to live on. Butler writes, “Wages – surprise! Were never enough to pay the bills” (288). Even when people were able to earn some type of wages, they couldn’t afford water and food. These kinds of occurrences are strikingly familiar to today’s world. Jobs that pay a low salary never quite get people out of debt. They also leave people with a low amount of money to buy food. Another similarity between this fantasy world and our current one is the distance people are made to travel to obtain food. Butler’s characters cannot find adequate stores that sell food and clothing at affordable prices. This is not a far off idea if the poorer areas of cities today are closely examined. People must travel further distances in order to buy the things they need, much like the people in Butler’s world. This problem of access to resources is what sets classes apart from each other in today’s society, and unfortunately, in Butler’s world, this lack of access is what keeps Lauren and her followers on the streets.

            In addition to not having access to money and proper food, the characters in Butler’s world do not have access to medical care or to the criminal justice system. Doctors and hospitals are long gone and the people are left to either not receive medical care, or to simply make due with that they have. Along with no medical care, these people cannot depend on the police for assistance. Often the police charge outrageous prices for routine investigations or worse, they don’t respond to a call for days. Again, while these situations might seem shocking to think about, they are going on in the world today. In poor areas of the city, police many times are slow to respond; if they respond at all. With Bankole’s situation, Butler writes, “The deputies all but ignored Bankole’s story and his questions. They wrote nothing down, claimed to know nothing.” (316). In this instance, the police didn’t even give Bankole a chance – they had their minds made up that he was a criminal. In the end, the lack of available resources is the community’s downfall. Because of the unavailability of water, food, money, and medical needs, they are left fending for themselves. They steal and share, make their own food, and try the best they can to survive under the less than perfect conditions that now make up their lives, just like some people do in today’s world.

As we watch Lauren begin to start her community of Earthseed, we also see her develop as a character watching her interact with different individuals in the book. As Harry, Zahra, and Lauren move north they meet a couple who Lauren calls their “natural allies”. She takes no time to enlighten them about Earthseed and her plans for the future. However, even though Lauren knows she must not trust anyone soon their group turns into ten people due of her kind heart. People quickly begin to realize the power of their group and tend to stand clear because of their unusual size.
One member of the group, Bankole, has a very interesting relationship with Lauren. Not only does he play her father figure, but he also becomes her lover. They first met after an earthquake hit California as Lauren and the group headed north. Lauren acknowledges that he is an older man but she finds herself immediately attracted to him despite their age difference. They strangely have gone through many of the same misfortunes; both of their communities were attacked by thieves and arson and both had very different religious beliefs with important people in their lives.
He brings a lot of wisdom to the group since he is the oldest and was once a doctor. One afternoon, while Lauren and Bankole were getting to know each other they talk about her religion of Earthseed. He questions her beliefs and ideas. The conversation they have reminds me much of the conversation she had with her father before he disappeared. She got in trouble for loaning a book to Joanne about survival and scaring her with the reality of being educated on how to survive beyond the comfort of their neighborhood walls. Just as Bankole pushes for answers about Earthseed, her father pushed for answers.
Bankole tells Lauren he doesn’t know where he is going, just north like the rest of the group. Lauren begins to question where he is truly headed; her intuition tells her that he isn’t just heading north, but that he has a definite destination. He confesses that he has 300 acres of land that he had made as an investment years earlier where his sister and her family reside. Bankole wants her to come with him but Lauren is hesitant because of her plans to spread Earthseed. He knows that Earthseed is his rival of Lauren’s heart, but asks her hand in marriage anyway. They come to a compromise that if Lauren comes with him that he will let her build the community she has always dreamed of. I predict that there will be conflict between them because of her passion to not only make an Earthseed community but because of her commitment to it. Will her relationship with Bankole get in the way or will he support her dreams of the future?

In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler makes several points about the role of religion and change in society. Butler calls for an active religion. In her novel, she writes about the creation of a religion that motivates people to do more than just pray to God for change. Through Lauren’s character and the new religion “Earthseed,” Butler seems to convey an underlying message that people need to put their futures into their own hands. People need to have active roles in society in order for society to improve. Butler also appears to make a statement that, in order to move away from the religious belief that God alone will save a community, all traditional religious beliefs should be reinvented and should adapt to a society’s current way of life. This is seen through the fact that when Lauren’s father, a community leader and minister, disappears, Lauren is forced to completely rebuild her life and religion.

In the novel, Lauren’s family is Baptist and Lauren doesn’t have the same religious beliefs as her family. She repeats that “God is change” in several places throughout the novel. Lauren believes that religion should adapt to suit what is needed in a current society. Especially in the devastating times that Lauren and her family live through, Lauren believes that religion must adapt to life and that life cannot adapt to religion without seeing regression in a society. She believes that her family’s religious beliefs have not been sufficient enough to help anyone in the Robledo. Therefore, Lauren attempts to form a religion that encourages people to actively create the changes that they wish to see in the world.

Lauren believes that the ideals of religion should support human action. In chapter 7 Butler writes, “They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don’t have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out.” This is what Lauren says after she names her religion after plant seeds. In these lines, Butler is criticizing the way in which people may be hesitant to react to problems in the community because they believe that just praying to God will help solve the community’s problems. Like Lauren, Butler feels that if people want to change society, they cannot just “sit in one place and wait to be wiped out.” People must actively do something to make the world change for the better even if it seems as though there is no hope.

In the novel, Lauren’s father disappears and, after this happens, Lauren’s world quickly changes. The community security appears to have weakened greatly and Robledo is hit with more robberies and arson than before. Lauren eventually loses her community, her home, and her family in a large fire caused by the drug addicted Pyros. This causes Lauren to rebuild her life and religion from scratch. It appears that Butler is saying that, in order to stop chaos and crime, people must start over. They must use what they know and change. Perhaps Butler believes that it takes extraordinarily unfortunate events to make human beings take action in a passive world. She believes that human beings do not initiate change until it is nearly too late. It is also obvious that Butler thinks religions need to make people realize that change is essential to the world’s well-being.

Finally, as far as religion is concerned, it appears that Bulter feels that its role in today’s society is near obsolete. With the disappearance of Lauren’s father, who is most likely a symbol of the insufficiencies of today’s religions, Lauren is able to work more on her Earthseed religion. It is at this point in the novel, that Lauren also begins to try and make a better life for herself by travelling north, where the economy is better and resources are in larger abundance. This is also a point of great change for Lauren as a whole. She is now one of the poor and homeless people that she once feared. She begins to see the world from a different perspective and this new way of life appears to encourage Lauren’s creation of a new religion. One message that Butler emphasizes greatly in the novel is that it is important to see when change is necessary and, when change is necessary, people need to actively and effectively pursue this change.