Question: How does Jenny Offill’s minimalist and fragmented narrative structure in Weather play with temporality & reflect society’s difficulty in both conceptualizing and acting in the current climate crisis? How does this shape the novel’s portrayal of existential uncertainty about the future?

Peinado-Abarrio, Rubén “‘FRAGMENTED AND BEWILDERING:’ THE NEW RISK SOCIETY IN JENNY OFFILL’S WEATHER'” https://institucional.us.es/revistas/estudios/26/peinado-abarrio.pdf 

Preston, Alex (The Guardian) “Jenny Offill: ‘I don’t miss the world as much as, perhaps, I should’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/09/jenny-offill-weather-climate-crisis-coronavirus-donald-trump

Bernhard, Stephanie (LA Review of Books) “Survival Tips: On Jenny Offill’s ‘Weather’” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/survival-tips-on-jenny-offills-weather/ 

Sehgal, Parul (New York Times) “How to Write Fiction When the Planet Is Falling Apart” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/magazine/jenny-offill-weather-book.html 

Question: How does Butler’s portrayal of Earthseed in Parable of the Sower defy traditional religious narratives by redefining divinity as “change,” and how does this redefinition affect concepts of resilience and community within a dystopian context?

As I searched for sources, I looked at the Jstor database and the Hunter Onesearch library database. I typed in keywords like “Parable,” “Sower,” and “Parable of the Sower,” along with religion and dystopia. I typed part of my question into the search option and got some results. However, that did not work too well for the MLA database because my options there were quite limited, and either I didn’t use the right keywords, or the database didn’t have what I was specifically looking for. I found it helpful to type keywords that I could use to describe my main thesis/argument because I had more articles to work with that way. I also tried to search under the names of critics we read about in class (i.e, Canavan).  

Govan, Sandra Y. “Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 230, 2007, pp. 1–131.

Melzer, Patricia. “‘All That You Touch You Change’: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.” Femspec (Cleveland, Ohio), vol. 3, no. 2, 2002, pp. 31-.

Yaszek, Lisa. “Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, and the History of the Future.” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 20, no. 3, 2006, pp. 41–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300600950236.

Phillips, Jerry. “The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 35, no. 2/3, 2002, pp. 299–311. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1346188. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.

STILLMAN, PETER G. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables.” Utopian Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2003, pp. 15–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20718544. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.

Dubey, Madhu. “Folk and Urban Communities in African-American Women’s Fiction: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 103–28, https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.1999.0017.

Andreolle, Donna Spalding. “Utopias of Old, Solutions for the New Millennium: A Comparative Study of Christian Fundamentalism in M.K. Wren’s A Gift Upon the Shore and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Utopian Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 2001, pp. 114–23.

Allen, Marlene D. “Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ Novels and the ‘Boomerang’ of African American History.” Callaloo, vol. 32, no. 4, 2009, pp. 1353–65, https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.0.0541.

Agusti, CE. “The Relationship Between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Extrapolation, vol. 46, no. 3, 2005, pp. 351–59, https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2005.46.3.7.

Ruffin, Kimberly T. “Parable of a 21st Century Religion: Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic Bridge between Science and Religion.” Obsidian III, vol. 6/7, 2005, pp. 87–104. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44511664. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.

Canavan, G., 6, J., Hairston, A., 17, J., Kadue, K., 12, N., Kemp, S., 14, N., Maginity, J., Jacobs, G., & 3, N. (2014, June 9). “there’s nothing new / under the Sun, / but there are new suns”: Recovering octavia E. butler’s lost parables. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/theres-nothing-new-sun-new-suns-recovering-octavia-e-butlers-lost-parables/

Question: How does Octavia Butler emphasize the “everyday Anthropocene” in the Parable Of The Sower?

Feist, Ella. “Analysing the Disproportionate Impact of Climate Disaster on Social Minorities as Represented in Climate Fiction: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Paolo Bacigalupi’s the Water Knife.” Journal of Intersectional Social Justice, Access Academia, 31 Aug. 2023, jisj.pubpub.org/pub/iqf31op5.

Davidson, Joe. “Fear of a Black Planet: Climate Apocalypse, Anthropocene Futures and Black Social Thought.” Journal Sage Pub, 2021, https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/doi/full/10.1177/13684310211067980

Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” JSTOR, 1998, www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.

Feist, Ella. “Analysing the Disproportionate Impact of Climate Disaster on Social Minorities as Represented in Climate Fiction: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Paolo Bacigalupi’s the Water Knife.” Journal of Intersectional Social Justice, Access Academia, 31 Aug. 2023, jisj.pubpub.org/pub/iqf31op5.

Rutledge, Gregory. Futurist Fiction & Fantasy: The “Racial” Establishment, 2001. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3300498

How does Parable of the Sower explore the competing models of community in a post-apocalyptic world, and how are these models shaped by dynamics of race, gender, and leadership?

1. “Crip Collectivity Beyond Neoliberalism in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower” by Jess Whatcott ( https://csalateral.org/section/cripistemologies-of-crisis/crip-collectivity-beyond-neoliberalism-octavia-butler-parable-of-the-sower-whatcott/ )

2. “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Community in Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series” by Anna Hinton ( https://journals.macewan.ca/muse/article/download/2005/1308/3703 )

3. “Parable of a 21st Century Religion: Octavia Butler’s Vision in Parable of the Sower” ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/44511664 )

4. “We Need the Stars: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower” ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/27743152 )

5. “Migration and Capital of the Body: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower” ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325296 )

The anthropocene seeks to explore the phenomenon of the “human era” and how it has manifested in different ways. How does the presence of capitalism and class in Parable of the Sower and other novels present the reality of the anthropocene?