Was it a good idea to read these two books at this time? Not really. Being privileged meant a home and food being poor meant long queues for ration and no access to home. The large scale exodus of migrants showed us how brutal our social realities are, and how fragile the systems we depend on remain. I finished Parable of the Talents well into lockdown in May 2020, when I had gone through a round of worrying about essentials and supplies. March 2020, when I started reading, was a time for fear and anger, certainly, but not of contagion, and we were laughing at those people who “stockpiled” antibiotics and did elbow-hellos and frightened everyone around them at gatherings. As always, her protagonists were Black, and the future was not the same future that white people imagined. I was attempting to be more comprehensive in my reading of Butler, and this was the least sci-fi of her books, with very few technological advancements. I began Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler a little before we began the lockdown, when the atmosphere in India was pre-CoVid19. Read Kavya’s review, and get Butler’s books from Champaca, available as a limited edition gift box. This little note about Octavia Butler’s Parable Series was written by Kavya Murthy in May 2020, when things around the lockdown were very pressing. Under The Reading Tree: Children's Library BlogĬhampaca Book Subscription: Loneliness and Connection
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