Since Trump got elected, many people in my community have been talking about how Octavia Butler was a prophet and how her books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents eerily predicted the climate change, wildfires, and fascism of our current world. Many people in movement spaces have taken Butler's words as prophecy and text...But what is often missing from these discussions is how Lauren Olamina, Butler's Black, genderqueer teenage hero who leads her community out of the ashes and founds a new spirituality that embraces change as god, is disabled. In the book, she is called a sharer: someone with hyperempathy syndrome from her mother's use of the Einstein drug, a popular drug that heightened intelligence. She feels everything everyone feels, and it's often overwhelming in a way that reminds me of some autistic and neurodivergent realities. It gives her impairments and also gifts. To me, Butler's Parable books are a Black disability justice narrative.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Since Trump got elected, many people in my community have been talking about how Octavia Butler was a prophet and how her books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents eerily predicted the climate change, wildfires, and fascism of our current world. Many people in movement spaces have taken Butler's words as prophecy and text...But what is often missing from these discussions is how Lauren Olamina, Butler's Black, genderqueer teenage hero who leads her community out of the ashes and founds a new spirituality that embraces change as god, is disabled. In the book, she is called a sharer: someone with hyperempathy syndrome from her mother's use of the Einstein drug, a popular drug that heightened intelligence. She feels everything everyone feels, and it's often overwhelming in a way that reminds me of some autistic and neurodivergent realities. It gives her impairments and also gifts. To me, Butler's Parable books are a Black disability justice narrative." in the context of "Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.