“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” — Octavia Butler (1998), “Parable of the Sower”
Afrofuturism is a movement of art, culture and literature that seeks to explore dilemmas faced by Black people and theorize possible futures. Afrofuturism will be our framework to re-examine events of the past, critique the present-day dilemmas of the African diaspora, and create a space to imagine and dream of possible futures.
Afrofuturism ponders the questions, “Where are we now?” “Where do we want to be?” and “How do we get there?” because we have to imagine the future we want to see.
One of the mothers of Afrofuturist writing is Octavia Butler, and few works of fiction are as prescient and instructive as her seminal work, “Parable of the Sower.”
Who was Octavia E. Butler?
Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, her mother was a maid and her father a shoe shine man who died when she was 7. She was raised in a strict Baptist home by her mother and grandmother. Though introverted and socially awkward, and having severe dyslexia, she spent hours reading science fiction and fantasy in her public library.
When she was 10, she saw the B-movie “Devil Girl from Mars” which changed her life. She had two epiphanies: “Someone got paid to write that,” and “I could write better than that.” So she convinced her mom to buy her a typewriter.
A well-intentioned aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.”
She graduated high school in 1965 and began to take night classes at a local community college. She entered and won a fiction writing contest with a draft that would become “Kindred,” her best-selling novel. While working a series of temp jobs, she was encouraged by science fiction great Harlan Ellison to keep writing.
In 1984, her short story “Speech Sounds” (about the unraveling of civilization when a disease renders everyone mute) won the Hugo for Best Short Story. The next year she won the Hugo and Locus Awards for her novella “Bloodchild.” “Parable of the Sower” came out in 1993 and “Parable of the Talents” in 1998, the latter of which won the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction novel. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “Genius” Award.
The Parable series was supposed to be at least a trilogy, but researching it proved too depressing for her, so she gave herself a break by writing a science fiction vampire novel called “Fledgling.” It was her 14th and final book. She died of a stroke in 2006.
She inspired a generation of writers (myself included — I sent out my first story in 1993).
“Parable of the Sower”
If you haven’t had a chance to read the book, here’s a Crash Course Literature by John Greene.
Octavia Butler has said that she came to this vision of the future by imagining our current problems progressing unchecked to their logical ends. How prescient was Butler? Here’s a taste:
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”
That quote was about a presidential candidate running on the platform “Make America Great Again” … which she wrote in 1998 in the sequel, “Parable of the Talents.” Her work combines imagination with social, political and even religious practice. It creates blueprints to find new ways to understand ourselves and the world around us. And, with its Afrofuture promise, it paints a vivid portrait of what the world could look like.
The Kheprw Institute will host an online book discussion of “Parable of the Sower” at 1 p.m. ET July 11. In our discussion, we’ll be looking at themes in the book focusing on community strategies to survive a dystopian landscape, as well as a discussion on what transformative justice may look like. Click here to RSVP and join through Zoom.
Maurice Broaddus is a world-renown Afrofuturist and scifi writer based in Indianapolis. He is the resident Afrofuturist at the Kheprw Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on empowering youth and building community wealth in Indianapolis.
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