Octavia E. Butler

And then...

In terms of literature, there's a book that I've been shouting out and I'm going to shout it out once again because I kind of want everybody to read it in that, you know, for us, Octavia Butler heads and Octavia taught me and Asada taught me, you know, for us, for us, you know.

You know, I think that, and yeah, I'm a big fan of science fiction and speculative fiction and what have you.

And I think that I've recently heard something that said a lot of men don't read science.

Right.

And so I want to big up a book that I think everyone talks about, you know, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.

by Octavia Butler and the fact that she was unable to finish Parable of the Trickster.

There's a book that I read recently that I feel like, oh, this is kind of like the third book.

I absolutely love him, and I do very much love that you're studying California literature in Paris.

It's very characteristic that what got me to sign up for the class was saying that we're covering an Octavia E. Butler short story, so the sci-fi is coming in

there.

Oh, yeah.

It's fantastic.

And for climate fiction, I always say, I mean, it's probably too obvious to say, but Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is... gosh it's just extraordinary I read it after I'd written this thankfully otherwise I would have just given up um and uh and not not such an obvious um suggestion but I have been reading all of Helen Garner's books recently and um several novels and I'm into the diaries which are just this thick and are a treat and I think I'm going to be reading them for the rest of my life so I'm just going to get to the end and start again she like thanks there we go there we go oh my gosh and um you know i think it's relevant um slightly because you know she's an australian writer and she's and everything's set in australia and i suppose you're just seeing characters there who are habituated to a more extreme climate than perhaps we're used to in the west so the climate is infusing these people and making them behave in certain ways but just beyond that like all the best writers it's just she's just showing you all the time like what what what are you anesthetized against like what are you numbed against and she's just gently gently pulling that apart and um there's nothing finer so uh yeah Helen Garner

is that the same person that wrote the the children's back it

is

ironically i love that ironically the two drops that i have of telling the truths is uh cm punk and bobby fish and uh bobby fish has a one-sided beef with cm punk but we do not have time to get into that right now we do not

I love what you had to say you know Octavia Butler

yes

she also believed in she would say write it down so it happens and that is something I truly believe you gotta say it you gotta believe it you gotta think it you gotta be it

I would put Harriet Tubman and Ida B.

Wells and Octavia Butler and Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph and Martin Delaney, I would put them up against anybody's miracle workers.

Because their delusion is one of the things that empowered them to tap into their imagination.

And it's one of the things that as a result of tapping into their imagination and believing so fervently, so intently, so proactively, believing with all their heart, as we say on the Imani principle, believing with all their heart and their people, their parents, their teachers, their leaders, and the righteousness and the victory of their struggle, they had a belief in a thing that did not exist.

I have a whole notebook and I really love that.

So like Octavia Butler, who is just amazing and phenomenal.

She wrote Lillis Brood, she wrote Parable of the Sower, like all these crazy, amazing books.

Like I don't even understand this woman's brain.

I got into those.

I know you're like a big Octavia Butler fan, too.

Oh, yeah.

Majorly.

Shout out to the kids.

So those are my three.

What is the Octavia Butler book that you would give to a

16-year-old? My joint that I like from her is Clay's Arc.