Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

 The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday May 14th with a discussion of both Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and   My Monticello (the novella in the collection of the same name) by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson.                          Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower in 1993. The main character, teen-aged Lauren Olamina becomes a leader of refugees, walking from Robledo (a fictional town in southern California) to northern California, seeking a safe place to build a community. She's guided by a belief system that she herself penned called Earthseed. She's been prepared collecting food, money, seeds to plant, clothing, and supplies for the day she had to flee. Her neighborhood is burned down by a group of drugged pyromaniacs. Lauren grabs her bag and takes off, attracting fellow travelers along the way.  Jocelyn Nicole Johnson wrote My Monticello is 2021. The ...

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower , a science fiction novel written in 1993. The setting for the novel begins in 2014 when the main character, Lauren Olemina is only 15 years old. She and her family live in a walled community surrounded by horrors going on right outside of her neighborhood that eventually spill in.   Although Lauren’s dad is a Baptist minister, Lauren creates a religion called Earthseed that becomes her guiding principal. She wrote a Bible called Earthseed: The Books of the Living. All that you touch You Change All that you Change Changes you. The Only Lasting Truth is Change. God Is Change. When forced to travel by foot from Southern California to Northern California, Lauren becomes a leader of a small group traveling with her. She also suffers a condition called “hyperempathy” which makes her feel the physical pain of others. All of us in our discus...