Courtesy Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler.
A new art exhibit, and a panel on migration facilitated by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). The screening and discussion of the “first-ever ethnographic acid Western.” A Sun Ra tribute concert.
All these events and more, happening between now and the middle of May, are organized around a single novel by a science-fiction visionary that is the focus of this year’s One City: One Read, a campaign organized by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in partnership with Yale’s Schwarzman Center, the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace, and Best Video.
The book is 1995’s Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, and selecting it for One City: One Read “was already predestined in the sense that the festival is producing Parable of the Sower — the opera — with the Schwarzman Center,” said Shamain McAllister, community programs manager for A&I. That work, an adaptation of the novel created by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon, will be staged as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in June. In a broader sense, though, “I think it’s very timely. I feel like this is an Octavia Butler era that we’re coming into,” she said. “There’s an appreciation coming back for her dystopian novels and sci-fi.”
Octavia E. Butler (1947 – 2006) was celebrated in her lifetime within the science fiction community as a pioneer and innovator, as a Black woman and as a straight-up genius, who expanded the possibilities for what science fiction could do. The success of her first three novels allowed her to write full-time. Over the course of her career, she won two Hugo awards, two Nebula awards, and several other major science-fiction awards. In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to be awarded a John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Since her death from a stroke, her influence has only grown. Parable of the Sower, which came out in 1995, became a bestseller again in 2020. That book and 1979’s Kindred have both been adapted into graphic novels. Parable of the Sower is also in development to become a movie, while other novels — Fledgling, Kindred, Wild Seed, and Dawn — are being developed into TV shows.
McAllister.
McAllister had her own path to discovering Butler’s books. “A while ago my friend had bought me Wild Seed, and I was like, ‘whoa, OK,’” she said. “When I began reading Parable of the Sower, it hit me like how I read The Hunger Games the first time — the migration aspect, the social aspect. She was blessed with the vision of ‘stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.’ I fell in love with her work.”
After discovering Butler, it becomes easier to spot her game-changing influence across the arts. “Once you’re unravelling the onion, it’s time to give credit where credit is due. This woman was setting the blueprint way before other people got hip to it,” McAllister said. “What she broke through, especially as a Black woman, coming into the literary scene, it was groundbreaking. It’s like when rock ‘n’ roll hit America, or hip hop. Everyone got nervous.”
Parable of the Sower, with its depictions of an America disintegrated due to climate change, wealthy inequality, and political unrest, feels more current than it did in 1995. “People are reading it like it’s new,” McAllister said. The book’s sequel, Parable of the Talents, famously contains a passage about a charismatic, demagogic president who rises to power on the promise to “make America great again.” It feels prophetic, but it’s not because Butler was lucky; it’s because she was so smart, observant, and knew her history.
“She was paying attention to the patterns. She had a keen eye. She was blessed with a level of discernment and intuition,” McAllister said. “From Reagan, to Clinton, to Bush, she was watching the evolution happening.” From this, she discerned the root of her fictional president’s — and Trump’s — allure: “He was so powerful because he tapped into a population that had felt unheard,” McAllister said.
At the same time, all of Butler’s work endures mostly because it’s visionary. The Xenogenesis trilogy envisions the next step in the evolution of humanity after it collides with a truly alien civilization. The Parable novels involve the creation and foundation of a new religion, Earthseed, based on a radical conception of the divine that rolls social justice and environmental issues together in a unique way, helping readers understand that they aren’t merely interconnected, but parts of a larger whole.
“There are revelations in her work that are transcending her time on this earth,” McAllister said. It make it all the sadder that Butler died relatively young — specifically, before she got a chance to write a third book, Parable of the Trickster, that was to follow Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Trickster, in turn, was supposed to be the third in what Butler imagined would be a seven-book series.
We will never see those books. But as Butler’s audience continues to grow, McAllister has a poetic answer: “It makes me wonder — are we writing that?” she said, in the way that we’re living? “She gave us all this game, and how are going to take her baton? You see people become active citizens, active in this earth, and active in their community.” As Butler herself writes, “All that you touch / You change / All that you change / Changes you / The only lasting truth is change / God is Change.”
In celebration of Butler’s vision — to heed her warnings and also partake in her hope — One City: One Read starts with book clubs of Parable of the Sower with students and parents in New Haven’s public schools, and at Gateway Community College and Albertus Magnus. It’s being taught in an English class at Common Ground. Audiobook and physical copies are available at the library. Copies of the graphic novel were given away as part of the Peabody’s commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King. “There’ll be more to come,” McAllister added. “If people can’t find a book, reach out. We want to get this in the hands of folks.”
The first One City: One Read event will be the opening of “Dyschronics,” the new show at Artspace, on Feb. 11. Artspace will then host a panel with IRIS about migration in New Haven on March 10, as well as a poetry event inspired by Butler’s book on April 9. The New Haven Free Public Library will host two different discussions of the novel on April 28 and May 14. The library will also host a vivacious film festival from May 3 to May 5, which includes both science-fiction classic Metropolis and the hard-hitting gonzo surrealism of Sorry to Bother You. May 6 will see a screening and discussion of the film Zerzura at the Q House, described as an “acid Western” shot in the Sahara. Best Video then hosts a Sun Ra tribute show on May 12 and will screen Sun Ra’s film Space Is the Place the following day.
“We really want to spark a fire in folks across this city,” McAllister said. If all goes well, some people will emerged changed, and ready to make change happen, too.
For the full listing of One City: One Read events, visit the International Festival of Arts and Ideas’s website.