1. Who are the Joannes in your life? Who are the folks who are more comfortable with the easy fix? How do we get them to want to be a part of our work?

2. How does Parable guide us in thinking about building networks, especially when others might not share beliefs with us? Must we all believe the same thing to build together?

3. How would the novel have been different if Lauren wasn’t hyper empathetic? What do we learn from her because of her heightened state of reality? How did Butler present hyperempathy?

4. “The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” How does this novel ask us to think about rootedness in the midst of a climate-induced global panic? How can we be both rooted and open to the inevitability of change?

5. Asked in 1999 what she would like readers to take from the novel, Octavia Butler replied: “I hope people … will think about where we seem to be heading — we the United States, even we the human species. What sort of a future are we creating? Is it the kind of future you want to live in? If it isn’t, what can we do to create a better future? Individually and in groups, what can we do?” What can we do? (autostraddle.com)

6. What surprised you most about the book? What will you take with you after reading it? Can you think of or share any approaches you plan to take or are currently taking to work towards positive change in our society?

7. In every time and situation, there are many diverse roles for people to play in the struggle for racial justice and/or healing. What actions do we see in the book? In our own society or lives? And how do our many identities such as gender, age, economics, etc. influence the roles we take on?

8. Do you think Parable of the Sower leaves us with hope for race relations in America? Why or why not? Do you think “hope” was what Butler was trying to convey to readers? If not, what are you left with at the end of the book? If so, hope in what?

9. Why did Lauren ally herself with people of color or those in multiethnic relationships?

10. She resisted labels, but because so much of her work centered voices often marginalized and messed with “traditional” American power structures she was often identified as a feminist, Black, radical, as the mother of Afrofuturism (the centering of Black futures).

 * Some questions from PVID.