Audubon Ballroon (he/him)@ggggbbybby, a white woman wrote:
Parable of the Talents [by Ocatvia Butler, Black Goddess]
I finished this and sat with it over the weekend
first off, it was good! it was a captivating story, well told, with lots of
(1/9)
interesting and complicated relationships between the characters
that is not why most people reading it in the 2020s are reading it for but I feel like jumping directly into "wow so many of these things happened in real life" misses the point of writing a story,
(2/9)
specifically writing a story about Black [People] in the future. its about the people, not the events.
to be totally honest I was reading it because there was an ebook sale and it has been on my "I should read this" list for a while because I love Octavia Butler's
(3/9)
other work.
_buuuut_ wow so many of these things are happening in real time. the christofacist president. the idea that the only "real" americans are conservative protestants. the officially-sanctioned terrorist gangs. the disappeared people. the labor camps. the
(4/9)
child abductions and destroyed families. the well meaning white people who don't know what to do besides send money, so they don't really do anything until someone else organizes a resistance for them.
and the reason Butler could write so accurately about the future is
(5/9)
that none of this is new. a good chunk of the book reckons with what it is like to be a slave and what it means to keep your humanity even when the outside world denies it and stomps you out. it looks at what it's like to grow up adopted in a "good" family after the state
(6/9)
rips your actual family apart. it looks at what it means to be a mother and an activist and how complicated that makes your relationships. it's especially unsubtle about how having a common purpose and working together towards it is what it means to grow up as a species.
(7/9)
this is a book about [the US], past, present, and future.
all that to say, this book made me _feel_ things - terror, suspense, crushing heartbreak, but also optimism, determination and hope. there is a path through this. it's ugly and dangerous and essential. may we be brave enough to walk it.
(8/8)