#Nowwatching Octavia [Butler] Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today's Pandemic with @moyazb @TananariveDue @monicaacoleman @FJasmineG #Octaviatried

#OctaviaTried @TananariveDue says she taught Parable of the Sower for her Afrofuturism course in the first all-online quarter during the lockdown. Jokes that she felt a little bad that students had to read such an emotionally difficult and timely book on top of the pandemic.

#OctaviaTried @monicaacoleman: Parable is a fantastic example of doing theology in the real world and thinking religiously, and the theologian is a teenage Black girl with hyperempathy syndrome.

#OctaviaTried @TananariveDue: Parable an inspiration for students to believe we can make a difference and a model for "real world worldbuilding." Esp as we get closer to the near future year Parable is set in, with Octavia's warning that our human nature would lead to destruction

#OctaviaTried: @FJasmineG Parable is a novel about building a new world on top of an old world.

#OctaviaTried @moyazb: students can assume the world has always been the way it is, and will always be this way. Parable shows how quickly things can add up and snowball—as we're seeing now in the middle of pandemic.

#OctaviaTried: @TananariveDue asks what the difficult parts of Parable of the Sower is for students. @FJasmineG: students had questions about Lauren's relationship with a much older man at the end of the novel.

#OctaviaTried: @moyazb agrees, students have difficulty with that aspect, especially being close in age to Lauren. Opportunity to ask about that feeling of protectiveness and where it's from, and changing cultural meanings of adolescence.

#OctaviaTried: @monicaacoleman students really struggle with Earthseed, protest that you can't write your own scriptures. Coleman: Of course you can! Where do scriptures come from? Also struggle with safety being dependent on accepting a religion—but faith comms work like this!

#OctaviaTried: @moyazb Parable encourages thinking about the difference between a cult and a religion. About coerciveness and faith. As has been said, "the difference between a cult and religion is time."

#OctaviaTried: @FJasmineG Lauren is a writer, writing out her scriptures is her way of figuring things out as she goes along.

#OctaviaTried: @TananariveDue Butler moved away from the religion of her father (a Christian minister), but recognized the power of religion. From anthropological perspective, all religions are cults; also difficult that religions and cults start the same way. Where's the line?

#OctaviaTried panel addressing question about how they would teach Butler through music. @TananariveDue raises the Octavia Butler space opera performed earlier this year. Due and @moyazb both raise Janelle Monae as example of afrofuturist music, engaging with Butler's themes.

#OctaviaTried: @FJasmineG's students' creative final projects focused on Butler often tried to work her ideas out through music of various genres.

#OctaviaTried @moyazb notes Black young people moving towards traditional African diasporic religious practices, or even quasi-religious practices like astrology, crystals, etc. Finding space that some couldn't find in Christianity, for example.

#OctaviaTried @monicaacoleman: all radical movements need spirituality, not necessarily Christianity, but spirituality.
@FJasmineG building on this: all movements need to address people's spirits. @TananariveDue: the spirit must be fed.

#OctaviaTried: @TananariveDue introducing a question about policing in Parable and if there are similarities to our world, notes that in this BLM moment where we're asking for police not to kill us, we're getting responses that are everything but addressing police brutality.

#OctaviaTried: @tananarivedue In Parable police are mostly sidelined in the novel. Characters have to pay for police investigations, and no expectation that the police will actually help you.

#OctaviaTried: @FJasmineG: Parable anticipates the privatization of public services, reflects policing that isn't actually about protection of people but a certain corporate world.