Parable of the Sower

Hey everyone! In this episode, we brought in distinguished Afrofuturist, author, teacher, mentor, and community organizer Maurice Broaddus to discuss Octavia E. Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. Set in the years 2024-2027, it's an eerily prescient look at the effects of late-stage capitalism on the American populace. It should be required reading, but it has a Black protagonist and dares to question American Exceptionalism, so, you know. It gets banned a lot instead. 

Originally we paired this discussion with this cocktail from This is Mold, but it wasn't the best drink we've ever had, so Friend of the Podcast Ambrosia Borowski crafted a replacement. We're calling the The Sower because we're super creative like that. 

The Sower

1-1/2 oz tequila

1 oz frangelico

1/2 oz lemon juice

3 dashes black walnut bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker tin with ice until chilled and pour into a chilled glass. Enjoy as you contemplate the state of the world and what part you'll play in a more hopeful future. 

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news music by Squidems -- https://freesound.org/s/709973/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to Bard Books, the podcast that combines banned books, cocktails, and conversation into one delightfully chaotic mix. I'm your host, Kelly Swales, and we've got a great guest with us today to talk about the classic novel, Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler. Buckle in, gang, because today's discussion is going to be full of near future dystopia.

unknown 0:35

Don't put it in the case.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I am a writer of uh, let's see, I probably ought to have a good count on this. About 18 or so books. Oh, just a few books, just a few. One or two, one or two. Uh about a hundred and I think we'll come up on 150 short stories, something around there. I'm also a community organizer. And then I'm also uh a librarian at a middle school. Uh I'm in my second year, no, third year as the librarian, is the librarian of the historic Paul Lawrence Dunbar Library. Uh so I've been a so uh, you know, I all that work involves me being a teacher, a mentor, all that kind of good stuff. And uh and being a librarian, I'm at ground zero. Oh, I'm uh also on the board of the Ray Bradbury Center. Both those things actually tie together because that puts me at the ground zero of all sorts of uh banned books discussions.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

There you go. Um, so I have a question for you before we get into today's cocktail pairing. When do you sleep?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Uh so by oh so here's my the official line is by marital mandate, I have to get uh a minimum of six to seven hours a night. By marital mandate.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

I like that. I like that. All right, well, welcome. I am really looking forward to this discussion today, but first I want to talk a little bit about the drink we're pairing with our discussion. Uh, we're drinking a riff on the acorn lemonade cocktail from the thisismole.com website. The link and uh our recipe will be on our website at frozen shoulderproductions.com, as well as our Patreon page at patreon.com slash frozen shoulderproductions. It's basically homemade lemonade into kilo with a little bit of hazelnut liqueur for Pizzazz. So uh cheers. Hey everyone, future Kelly breaking in with some breaking cocktail news. Uh so I made this cocktail from the This Is Mold website, and I have to be honest, I did not like it. It was unbalanced, the clip photo didn't really add anything to the mix. So I asked friend of the podcast Ambrosio to reimagine this cocktail while keeping the booziness and the nuttiness and the lemmininess of the original, and he delivered. So I'm going to have the link to the original as that we mentioned in the podcast, as well as Rowie's version. Uh I'm calling it the sewer because I'm really original when I come when it comes to naming things. Uh alright, enjoy. Back to the podcast. All right, so Parable of the Sower. This is a book that has been on my radar, obviously, for years and years and years. My never got around to reading it. And then recently it popped back up on my radar because so many people are like, no, this book is like prescient. It's set in the years uh 2024 to 2027, and a lot of the world building in the book really reflects the world that we're currently living in today to a lot of degree. Uh, it was written in 1993, and it's basically kind of written in a diary form. The author of the protagonist, Lauren Alamina, is the eldest daughter of a relatively well-off black family living in a walled community near Los Angeles. Now, you're you may remember a little bit better than I do, Maurice, whenever this book was released. I mean, dystopian fiction really didn't take off until like 20 or 2008, 2009, when like Divergent and Hunger Games kind of came out and in onto the scene. So, first off, this book was like well ahead of its time. Do you kind of remember like the splash it made when it first was published?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Actually, no. Um, and the reason for that is I was just getting started in my own writing career at this point, and so it's like 1993, and so this is actually ironically, this is the year that the term Afrofuturist uh Afrofuturism gets coined in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah, so it's uh 1993, 94 uh Mark Derry comes up with the term, and it's literally with him lamenting the fact that there were only um uh four four black writers writing in the speculative uh fiction area uh arena. So this is like Octavia, um Samuel Delaney, who uh uh Steven Barnes, and it's uh Charles Charles Saunders, Charles Saunders is those are the four, those are the four he name checks. And so and so he comes up with the term uh for futurism at that point. So oh, and then so so like I said, in 1993, I'm literally I at this point I am just now starting to write my first novel uh in 1993. Um and I don't even discuss so I'm I'm not even in the field yet, right, uh at this point. I I come to Octavia Butler late. Um so at this point I've been uh I've sort of uh uh imprinted on uh Stephen King and Neil Gaiman at this point in my oh yeah for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

I was I was knee deep in in Stephen King lore at this point.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yeah, Octavia Butler's not on my radar.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

And so and then it wasn't until I encounter uh Walter Mosley's book a few years later called Future Land. Um, which and that at that point that I I'm like, oh wait, we can do this with our stories, yeah. Oh yeah, and so that so then I do a deeper dive to like I need more stuff like this, and that's when I come across um Octavia Butler.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Right. You know what? Reading it, it was so so interesting to read this, you know, over 30 years later, right? Because it's like, wow, she was doing a lot of stuff that the later, like I would consider this a YA dystopian, right? Because it's it's got some dark, it's got some dark issues and things that it's dealing with, but our protagonist is obviously 15 to 18 while the story progresses. It's like right in that Y young adult YA dystopian wheelhouse, and she was doing that 20 years before it really started to take off. So she was really ahead of her time. And then it's so interesting to me that the world building in this, I mean, some of it's off, right? Some of it, the some of the timing is off from where we currently are today. But if we continue on our trajectory, I would say it's only two or three years off with some of this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I mean, considering when she wrote it, she'd be off by degrees, which is still terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, exactly. And and she's like I said, she's not like completely off base. It's just that the way things happen and the way that the way the puzzle pieces fit together and shook out, it's like, okay, yeah, well, we're not quite, you know, scavenging lemons from citrus trees yet, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

But I can see a future where that's happening.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, well, and then what was it by uh by the sequel, Parable of the Talents? Uh, the the the president rises, uh, the the the figure rises to power with the with the slogan make America great again.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Oh shit. Are you kidding? Obviously, I didn't read the sequel yet, but of course he is, of course he is.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

So by degrees.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

By degrees. By degrees. Yeah, so a lot of people were or you know, a lot of the discourse about this book online, I think, is like, oh, she's a soothsayer, she's you know, a psychic or whatever. But I think she does what the best science fiction authors do, which is look at where we're at and where we're going, and here's let's just extrapolate five steps ahead or 20 steps ahead, and now here's the world we're living in. Reading the book felt terrifyingly familiar. Let's talk a little bit about her hyper empathy. It's one of those things where I don't know that it's necessary within the book, but it's also one of those things that I know a lot of like speculative fiction authors get this advice, which is to give your protagonist a downfall or a failing or something that hinder hinders their path, so that their their path isn't super easy. And I I found the hyper empathy angle I liked it, and I I found I thought it was interesting that she tied it into you know, like if if your mom is on this particular drug or whatever, this it's a kind of a birth defect that happens in the children, right? Did you like that aspect, or did you or were you like, yeah, this is this is a bit too much?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yeah, that whole you know, give your uh character a major weakness thing, uh, you know, it's it's interesting because uh I'm I'm once you said that I started thinking through like who is from the practonists. I've had my in my my stories, and I'm just like they don't really have any super weaknesses other than well, they're just human and have just human fallacies, and usually that just gets in their way. Plus, also, you know, if I'm writing about middle schoolers, it's just like, hey, it all gets in the way being a middle schooler. Um yeah, your your your hormones. Hormones, yep. Your your ability to uh create great plans is not there. Nope executive dysfunction, kind of no frontal lobe action happening. So a lot of that's baked into the condition. So um it's interesting because with the hyperempathy, uh it does not explore what I thought it might because you know when you look at the the dystopian society, right? And and you know, how divided the people are, and and and even if you apply it to the the current circumstances we find ourselves in, right? Hyperempathy, you would think, would be actually point us towards a cure or you know, something of like, hey, you know what things would be a lot better if we could you know how many times we we wake open the news and go, you know, if you had one empathetic bone in your body, right? This would not be an issue.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Right. If you actually gave a shit about any other human being on the planet except for you, right, you wouldn't do this.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

And so, and I think that's the key thing about the hyperempathy, is it's it you have that condition set up against the world the state of the world. And so here you have a person who feels everybody's pain, and but because of that, that drives her to start to create this philosophy, right? Because she can feel other people's pain uh as if it's her own. Um, and it drives her to a concern for others, and she realizes, hey, you know what? I am not going through this world on my own, I'm going through this world as a part of this uh as a part of a community, whether I like it or not. Right, right. I am I am connected to people, therefore, if people are going to be connected to one another, how uh what could that look like? How should we move as a group? So uh uh it it it it does play come into play during the course of the story, but I think it's actually what fundamentally drives her Earthseed philosophy.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, it it does. I this is definitely something I really kind of wanted to dig into because I find it I found it so fascinating that someone who's living in this kind of dystopian world not only retains her faith in God, but kind of, I don't want to say recreates God, but puts this layer of not necessarily biblical mythology around this God, but it's just the the big thing is just God is change. And it's really interesting to me that someone that's living in a walled community that they have to worry about break-ins, they have to worry about fires. Her parents have good jobs, but even so, it's still not enough really to actually survive in this society. That someone in that circumstance would still turn to God.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Right. And and yeah, I'm I'm actually thinking about some of my work now. Um because uh I I'm uh by the time this releases, book three of my trilogy should be about ready to drop.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

And so and then the trilogy is called Astra Black. Uh and so book one is Sweep of Stars, book two is Breath of Oblivion, book three is The City Dreaming. And all and those three novels take place about a hundred or so years from now. It kind of skips this phase of our our reality.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Right. So please tell me we get to like the Star Trek future where we're kind of like in this utopia.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

And and so the so then, yes, so uh uh not quite a Star Trek future, but it's a if Star Trek was done through an Afro-futurist lens, that's where we are. Okay, okay. Um, and and what what got me to thinking about that um is the whole idea of like, because I remember uh Octavia Butler once described herself, she said, uh, I'm a what'd she say, I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

And uh and so when I'm reading this book, I'm I you you know you feel that sort of edge. And then I I have to half the time I describe myself as uh I'm an optimist if I'm not careful. Uh and so and so a lot of my science fiction work uh revolves around this idea of there's a future hope, and that's what what moves me. Uh but in both in both works, because I I come from a uh uh ministerial background and and raised and raised in the church and everything. However, I'm always doing this thing similar to what uh Lauren does in her book, this deconstruction of faith. Right in in light of where we are, and so uh so I'm I'm constantly doing that actually practically my spiritual walk, it's constantly deconstructing my faith. Um and and that deconstruction yeah, it's interesting how in in both cases it ends up with a very human-centered framework. Like if my faith is to mean anything, it should have direct impact on those around me and the kind of community that we create. Right. Or else it's meaningless. And you see each of the characters basically coming to the when they ask their questions, it all revolves around that. You know, is God this, you know, great genie in the sky, you know, doling out blessings capriciously uh or toying with us capriciously? And then they but and then when you when she goes, well, God is changed, you're like, Well, hang on, how do we question the nature of change? What does that look like? And so you have all these interesting uh discussions that basically come down to when when when all said and done, they're just like, Yeah, but how does this make us react as humans? How does it how do we become fully human because of this? Because you can't get to that place of community unless you are are at a place of being fully human and dealing with everyone else's full humanity.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, it's it's really did. I think that that is a good explanation, at least that helps me reconcile a little bit what I was feeling after having read the book. And obviously, this is part of part of the lens I'm I'm reading this through because you know the protagonist talks about the old science fiction books that were her grandmother's that we all read, right? Her household's a very educated household, and they basically, you know, teach the the neighborhood how to read and write and math and basically homeschool the neighborhood. And she talks about how her grandmother had the science fiction books, and it's just interesting to me that her father's Baptist teaching was more influential for her than like she's trying to find a way out of this through God. Whereas I feel like some science fiction tries to find our way out of this through science, right? And that's that's how I'm looking at it. It's like, how can we science our way out of things? And it's I really it wasn't like I was bumping up against it, like it didn't make me dislike the book, but it really made me take a few steps back and appreciate how some folks would do that, and not in a Christian nationalist way, right? Not not like, hey, everything in the Bible is super true, and you know, you know, us taking over the world is God's will or whatever. I don't mean like that, but just having this background of faith and saying, hey, you know what, humanity's gotta all work together, and God is the framework with which we move forward in that.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, and it's uh one ways I was looking at it, is it's an acknowledgement of there is a spiritual dimension to who we are and what makes us human, a whatever that means. Right, whatever that means. Uh, and then uh and then again, I'm gonna get in my head, I'm contrasting that to when I explore science in my trilogy, I come to the same conclusions about science. If science isn't rooted in our humanity, it too can go just as uh just as a askew.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Oh well, like the the current AI thing that they're all trying to push. Yeah, there's no there's nothing human about that. Other than other than all this bullshit they are that not bullshit, but other other than all the stuff that they stole from us that people have made to train the models.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

So yeah, so it's it's interesting that no matter you know, if you take it through the lens of uh of of faith or you take it through the lens of science, when all of a sudden done, and for it to have impact, everything has to be rooted again in that sense of of humanity and humanness. Or else it's just you know basically an intellectual exercise more than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Right, right. And I I that was an aspect of of the book that I really liked where it's based in humanity. You know, we have to have a community and we have to work together and we have to make sure like our neighbors are fed and make sure our neighbors are educated and can read. That was an aspect of this book too, and in the world building that I found was just slightly off. I'm gonna say I found it to be slightly off from where we are in our current real timeline with how how prevalent it is that people can't read or write. Like it's not uncommon to come across people that just don't know how to read. And in my head, I'm like, well, here today in 2026, that's not really that much of an issue. But then I take another step back and I'm like, well, wait a minute. Isn't our like average literacy level like sixth grade reading level? Like how many people in not to dog on some of these southern states, but how many people in say Alabama or Louisiana or anybody who grows up in a really poor area, how many of those people just never learn how to read?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Well, I think one of the things it points to is, and and again, she uh describes it as taking our current circumstances and working them through to their logical conclusion. Well, if you if one of those threads is the rise of anti-intellectualism, if you take that to its natural conclusion, it's going to be this sort of suspicion of higher education.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

You don't say you mean like how all the colleges are elites and they indoctrinate people and do the liberal agenda?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

And then here we are, off off again, we will go back to off by degrees.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

But here we are. But here we are. In fact, uh how many of my conversations I've had just in the last month with parents coming up to me with the whole, I think college is a waste of time for my child. And I'm just like, your child's in middle school.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

A, your child's in middle school, you've got six years to worry about this. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Um, and then B what uh and it's because uh, you know, if you know, because uh part of uh Parabolto Sowers is an examination of late stage capitalism. Oh, absolutely. So then it again, logical conclusion, what does capitalism want? It wants warm bodies that are workers for the system. And you know, if you are highly educated, if you are high, you know, uh reading and writing and all that kind of stuff, then no, that you you actually are not the ideal employee. Oh no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

If you can think, if you can push back against what management wants to do and give them chapters and verses and reasons why that this is like a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

They don't want that. They want cogs in the machine. And so the easy the best way to get to the cog stage is to make sure that education's off the table.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

You know, and we're definitely seeing the Beginning shades of that with what's being uh advocated for uh with this administration, not only college is dumb, don't send your kids to school, they're nothing but liberal, you know, bastions of liberal thought that and you'll you know indoctrinate your children and they'll come back a different gender, right? Like oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

It's not how that works.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

It's not quite how that works. You know, but also the flip side is this idea where it's like, you know, hey, we need to bring back manufacturing and factories, and we need to have like the the the strong work ethic where your dad, your grandpa worked at at the plant, and now your dad works at the plant, and you, you know, you're gonna like grow up and work in the plant. And I'm like, you guys realize what they're talking about, right? They're like talking about like a Pullman neighborhood or a company town, or you do you do you realize what they're talking about?

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

And you know, I've got a lot of family that live in downstate Illinois, which is big Trump country, and they're they're just you know, they're folks that uh just watch Fox News and just kind of are in the colds essentially, and they're like, Yeah, this is a great idea because it is. It's looking around you, and and the gas prices are expensive and the groceries are expensive, and you're not making enough money to survive. The idea that you could go and live someplace and your room and board are all taken care of, and you can just work and you'll actually have enough money or things provided for you that you'll have a good life, it sounds like super, super uh like, yeah, this is a great idea. Let's totally do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah, and apparently the same people have not cracked open a history book. I'm just like, wait, isn't that what a plantation was?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I well, and I was gonna I was gonna say the slavery word, Maurice. I was like, Do you not? You know, you're sure you're getting paid, but you realize that you're always going to be in debt to the company, and once you're in there, you can never fucking leave.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Never leave. You were constantly indebted to them.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

So I'm just like constantly indebted, and I don't wanna the house I grew up in until I was about 10. We didn't, it was a company house, right? Like we paid rent, but it was like $25 a month, which on the service surface sounds like really great. Well, A, the organization did not pay my dad actually very well, and B, like our house was literally falling apart. You know, we had like a toilet that would flush sometimes. The bedroom that the room that was my bedroom while we were still living there kind of basically fell off the house because the roof was so terrible, that sort of thing. It's like this is kind of the commit conditions I grew up in. So whenever I hear hear this discourse now, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guys, you don't want this, you do not want this, you do not want this. But I can see where somebody who's living kind of in this dystopian environment that we're in, where someone would be like, yeah, this is a great idea, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

And it is interesting to me that Lauren, our protagonist, really has a clear-eyed view of this. Like she's not afraid to push up against her dad, she's not afraid to push up against authority figures, she's not afraid to make her own plans. Like she already knows she's out the door when she's 18 and she's gonna move, travel north, and she's leaving. So I find that obviously that's good fiction, right? Your protagonist has to has to protag. But in terms of like growing up in this environment, I find it interesting that she's just so strong, strong-willed, and strong-minded, and she's she's very clear on what she wants.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

So let me back up. So, like uh the community organization I work for, uh working with alongside them, this was one of the first books that we uh uh we we started this thing called Afro Future Fridays.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Oh, fine.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

And uh, and so this was one of the books that we did early on, and this is like 10 years ago when we did this as uh uh we we uh did this Afro Future Fridays, and then uh we'd have a series of book discussions and everything. And this was one of the books that we read uh about four years ago. So, like I said, that was 10 years ago, then four years ago, was it four or six, about six years ago actually, in 20, yeah, 2020, then the organization came back to the book and we're just like it's now gonna be mandatory reading for everyone in in the organization. So let's have an organization-wide mandatory reading of uh of Parable of the Sower. Uh and one of the reasons why is because you know, again, is uh and this was again six years ago, but it's like if this book is prescient, then what does this book, this uh what does this book teach us about how we need to prepare and and how do we need to move forward?

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

What sort of things do we need? You know, and so it's like, all right, so what uh and so so I start thinking about what was the the big lesson of uh uh of this like a post-apocalyptic type type work or or this or of dystopian fiction. In fact, uh this is B book. Uh if you want to talk about uh afra it through the Afro-futurism lens, there's always a discussion about does this book represent Afro-pessimism? No, sure. Right? And so so and so we got Afro-Pessimism, the the dystopia. What what does that bring to the conversation? And and ultimately, like I said, I I tend to write from that lens of future hope. But this is the what does the blueprint of resilience look like? Ultimately, is what this book is about. What is the blueprint for resilience? Uh what are the qualities that either Lauren has or that Lauren wants for her community that will help them survive the age they're in and move forward. And so one uh, you know, I always think about how a person can uh how she personally is adaptable. Um, she's adaptable and she's resourceful. Um, and that's what we need to be as individuals and as a community. Uh, I think about, and it was what and it's what you said that got me going down the street when you talked about how she was, you know, had this stubbornness to her, seeing uh her her you know her dad's teaching, but go, but having that determination of I'm going to go my own way. And when I think about that, I think about you know what? She has uh sometimes we'll call it an abundance mindset. Sometimes I call it uh the streaming mindset, but it starts with I have a vision for how things need to be, how I have a vision for how my life needs to be, I have a vision for how our community needs to be, and I'm going to stubbornly cling to that vision as my true north. And then that that stubbornness that uh, you know, you go, okay, she needs perseverance because they're going to be tried and they're gonna go through trials, and they as an individual and as a group, they need to persevere through those those trials, those ordeals. And then I'm thinking about the last thing that I'd uh thought about was the whole idea of self-sufficiency, because and that self-sufficiency, how do how do we take care of ourselves, how do we feed ourselves, and it all begins with seeds, right? They have to be able to grow their own food, and that thus the emphasis on seeds. So that that's that's what uh yeah, that's what uh house think about.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Well, you know what? Let's touch on this a little bit because there was a conversation that she has that's probably in the first quarter or first third of the book with her friend Joanne, where it's like, hey, you know, you have to have a go bag. We need to plan, you need to start reading these books, we need to, you know, start thinking about getting out of Dodge because, you know, like we're safe here now, but that's not always going to be the case. And her friend Joanne basically rats her out to the parents, right? Because they have this conversation when they're about 15 and she's still like at that age where she's still wanting to run to her mom and dad and be like, we're having this conversation, and then you know, uh things get back to Lauren's dad, and Lauren gets a talking to or whatever. But it's interesting to me where she has. I can't remember if Joanne's white or not.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Um I believe she is.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

I think that she is. It's interesting to me because I see it in so many of my white middle class friends where they're all kind of not all of all of them, but still a lot of them are waiting for things to get back to normal. You know, like, hey, we just have to like win the midterms and we'll be okay, or hey, we just have to make sure that we win the White House in 2028, and then everything will be fine and it's all back to normal. Right. And I'm like, are you are you looking at the same stuff I'm looking at? Because we are so far away from normal, and actually we're never, we can't ever go back. We have to like figure out what the future looks like, right? And that's what Lauren's doing, right? She's like, I don't know exactly what the future looks like, but I know what the near future is gonna do to us, and we need to prepare for that. So it's interesting to me that as bad as their situation is, like they live in a walled community. Half of the neighborhood has like multi-generational houses because no one can afford housing, and yet they're still like, it's gonna be fine as long as we have the right president, things are get things will get better. Or they have like such hope that things will just get better. And it's like they don't realize that the water is already boiling around them. And I just found that like an interesting I that's an interesting aspect, I think, of the world building that I if I were to have tried to do this back in the day, like with my own fiction, I that's an aspect I wouldn't have explored, I don't think, because I would have came at it from the idea that like everyone's super logical and can obviously see what's happening, right? So they're not they're gonna know the water's hot, but real talk, like half the people don't realize the water's even over a fire.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, it's um yeah, I do explore a lot of these ideas in my fiction, uh, for for example. And so, yeah, so you know, there's that that sense of privilege that says, hey, we just gotta get back to normal, we gotta get back to normal, we've got to get back to normal, as opposed to that constant, no, we're in the new normal. This is the new normal. So what's what what does it mean to adapt and move forward? But the but the that examination comes only if you if you have the the bend of history that you can that you can look at, right? And so even in story, I can't remember if it was her father or a lover uh uh that uh where where they said, I'm old enough to remember the before the times before this. And so I'm kind of glad that you don't know what the normal was that we all miss, that we miss so the so that she only has the current circumstance as her measuring stick as opposed to uh you know what was before. So for her, this is the normal. Uh, I was having a conversation with uh a parent the other day, and she was frustrated because she was just my my child has come as a come of age, and Trump is the normal for her. That our children, this is the normal. So they don't know about what came. If you don't have that lens of history, you don't know what came before. And so for that, like, oh, this is just how things are supposed to be. Like, wait, no.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

No, not even remotely. If they are not supposed to be like that, yeah, it's interesting because uh like I'm a big West Wing junkie, right? Like I like to rewatch a series.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

The first four seasons.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Oh, the first four. I mean, I I'll I'll push through. Uh actually, I've only seen the seasons five, six, and seven twice, but but yes, the first four seasons are where it's at. You know, I'd like to revisit that series, A, because it's just a good series and the writing's great, but B, like you're looking at this and it's like, oh, it's so nice to have let's it's almost like competency, liberal competency porn in government. The government's actually peopled with people who actually give a shit and they want to do a good job and they want to do good a good thing, good things for the American people. So I've seen some discourse recently where folks like our age are watching the show and then they're introducing their, you know, like middle school, high school kids to this show. And to your point, like these kids today, kids today, they just don't have that frame of reference. They're looking at this and they're like, this is is this did government really kind of work it like this? And it's like, okay, fine, yes, yes, yes, it is a Sork and Fantasyland, but it's not that far off from how government should be working for the American people.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Or just for the people, not necessarily Americans, but you know, the idea that you've got people who are competent that actually know stuff that want to make everyone's life better rather than the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Right. Um sorry, I even have you talk, I keep adding uh adding uh qualities that should uh be going towards this this community, this ideal community. And then the one that just popped into my head was uh uh what multi-generational.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

The leadership needs to be multi-generational because the young bring fresh ideas, absolutely, but the elders bring that lens of history of here's what has happened before.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Right. Oh, here's why maybe a company town is a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, I I know just like just sort of living in today's world, so often I get so angry that I'm like, man, you you fuckers haven't read any books and it shows, or you haven't read any dystopian fiction and it shows. Because so much of this is laid out by authors that play in these playgrounds, right? It's like this is what happens. Like, why why do you not know this? But you know, if you're living in a society that doesn't value reading or value education or value learning from history, then or value dreaming.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Value dreaming, yes. Because uh so I was asked not too long ago, and they were like, You seem to again, this whole idea of like I seem to be so hopeful and and and not not particularly bothered by the times that we're in. Right. And they're like, Why why is that? And I'm just like, well, uh it's because we're living in the product of someone's imagination. And and and they are uh and they are playing by a playbook, their familiar playbook. And if I if you are familiar with their playbook, then you know what they're they're what they're playing with. And what and and it boils down to I create with a blank page. So for me, I I come to the page, anything's possible. They're playing by the same playbook, and there's two things from in play. They're playing by the same playbook, and two, they have a dearth of imagination. And I can see that from what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

I have imagination for days, my community has imagination for days. Why should I be scared when I can out-imagine them? They don't get to see me coming, they don't get to see the community and what what community is doing, as long as the community stays organized and in communication with itself. We could we create, we move with a blank page, we out-imagine them. No, I'm not particularly bothered.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Well, and also an aspect of it too is you know, they're looking at us like a bunch, we're a bunch of NPCs, right? Like, oh no, we're just gonna make our moves and we're just gonna do exactly what we need to do in order for them to win. And it's like, no, no, no, we're like actual real people. It's like y'all don't think we are, but we're actual real people. Correct, correct. No, and we're gonna grab our whistles and videotape you, you know, taking our our neighbors. We're going to we're not going to just let you steamroller us. That's not that's not what this is about. Right. We're gonna make your job real hard.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Right. I'm I' uh uh I've been doing a lot of historical stories and historical novels uh recently, and so doing a deep dive into you know how did black people move through spaces in like the 20s and 30s, for example. Oh, sure. And so uh, but one of the things was the common refrain was as long as they they acted a certain way around white folks, but they the way they acted catered to white folks' perception of who they were. Oh and because of that, it's like you they would couldn't plan for oh well you might do blah blah blah because they didn't think it was possible. For speaking to your point, we were all NPCs and we all functioned to this, so they couldn't imagine us organizing and doing all this and all this behind closed doors because they didn't see us as smart enough to be able to pull that to pull that off. Right. It's like, oh, okay. Again, come back to a blank page and we can and out-imagine or organized communities can out-imagine.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Well, and I think too, speaking of looking at this through a lens of history, history's written by the winners or whatever, and a lot of these community initiatives and the community activists and the Black Panthers and everything, like a lot of that knowledge isn't mainstream, that's been buried.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

You know. So it's where are you getting your news? Where are you getting your information? Are you reading right widely? Are you reading at all? Are you just you know being fed what they want you to know? So that kind of brings me to kind of the power of reading and basically why I want to do this podcast series anyway. It's just in the first place, it's you know, if you don't read these kind of books and and you're not reading the news and you're not just not reading, then you're susceptible, more susceptible, I think, to an authoritarian regime, or you're more susceptible to being like, you know what, I just want somebody to tell me what to do and I'll do it, kind of thing. Um so this book's been banned, obviously, for a lot of reasons, you know, like race, politics, that sort of thing. But I think a big thing is that it's banned because it gives people a roadmap for hope.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

I mean, I I don't overlook the whole idea of it being banned for race because I live in Indiana.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

And uh and uh a lot there's uh and and so a lot of my activities um as a librarian have been criminalized.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

I I I there are certain penalties I face I I could potentially face uh given where I where I live. Actually, this ties that this ties perfectly back to what I just said. The whole lack of imagination will just out-imagine you. So uh a lot of the rules they have in place for how libraries are supposed to operate and uh and everything, uh they have per they they they put all these really stringent rules and stuff in place, and then they went and exempted uh Christian libraries, Christian schools. Christian schools are are exempted from this because they never imagined that a private Christian school would hire a militant black librarian and then create the blackest library space just about the entire city. Um of black literature, right? Uh uh because I even said when I when I accepted the role, I said I will only accept this if I if uh uh on on two conditions. One, I I could start a residency program, an artist residency program in the name of Mari Evans, who is a poet from the black arts movement who lived in our neighborhood. So now uh so we start off with there's a residency program where I get to bring in the top some top flight black creators from across the country to come work with our students. So that's condition one. Condition two, I said I want to be able to curate three special collections: a Harlem Renaissance collection, oh yeah, a black arts movement collection, and an Afro-futurism collection. Yeah, all of which, all almost all the books on those shelves are banned. Of course. But they can't do anything to me because I have them in a in my own section in a private school where that they've exempted. Uh and and because of the city. Right. And be but because I've been exempted, that means anyone in the city can order any of the books that I have on the shelves and it still be circulated. Nice. So so we so we have that in play. Uh, but then the other thing I I did recently is uh so you know you you face out certain books, you know, uh on the shelves and everything. The only books I have faced out on my shelves are books that have been banned. And I that includes books in our school's curriculum. Oh and so because uh there were a couple of teachers who were like, well, why do you have these faced out? Because we we teach these books. I'm like, yeah, these books have been banned in different sections of the country. About a third of our books that we teach are banned. Our teachers didn't even know it. Really? They were just like, Well, these are classics. Yeah, the classics have been banned. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, right. You don't get to just willy-nilly read Animal Farm anymore.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

No, no, it's not if you're living in the middle of Utah, you probably don't have access to it.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Correct. So uh you tick down and like so many books have just been banned for their politics, for their for uh dealing with issues of race. And that and that is huge. That is huge because political books force you have to think about politics and the nature of politics.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

And different in different perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Correct. So same and thus race. Books about race, force you have to deal with an unpleasant history. And again, but the key to both of those things forces you to think.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Oh, wait, wait, that's the thinking thing. Critical analysis, critical thinking? Okay. Now that's a bridge too far, Maurice. We don't want that.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

I know. And and I think ultimately, now that now I've been thinking about this out loud, because uh back to our previous discussion when we talked about when we talk about faith and everything. So faith, meet me as a Christian, and and Lauren as as uh the pretender for Earth Seed and everything, right? There's a greater story that we have created or believe in, right? There's a greater overarching story that we we hold to.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Right. Whether you're into like faith or God or astrology or yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Right. And so cultish religions or cults don't want you to question that monomyth, right? Nope, can't do that. So now, so you said why why are these book banned? There is a monomyth that we create as a culture, as a nation. Anything that causes you to question the monomyth of American or of manifest destiny, of American uh exceptionalism, exceptionalism. Anything that causes you to question that story. Yep. Let's go ahead and ban that.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Yep, nope, can't can't do that. Nope. There's one more thing that I want to talk about before before we get you out the door.

unknown 45:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

And we don't have to touch on it a whole lot, but it's one it is an aspect of the book that I personally don't think holds up, especially in the in the Me Too or the sex trafficking era that we're kind of in. Like all these things have been happening and have been brought to light and and like they've always existed, right? But I think it's now more in the mainstream where it's like, oh shit, this is really prevalent and really out there, and like it's really like this is really a thing. I'm not a big fan of Lauren, who by this point is 18 years old, who is of age, and we can argue that she's older than like emotionally older than 18.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

But let's just say that she fight sees this very fine-looking black man on the road, and he happens to be 57, and she's like, Yeah, you know, we're gonna bone. Like that's a thing that I didn't and he's into it, but not in like a creepy grandfatherly way, right? He's kind of like into it because you know, she's an adult, and I'm like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Yeah, yeah. To his eyes, she's an adult, she's older than her, you know, she she feels like she's an older spirit and very capable, yeah. Right, which is fine, but as a man, that's what we always tell ourselves. Frankly. Right. And when she made when she made the observation, oh, he's just one year either older or younger than my dad, I thought that's the full stop. We're done.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

That's like I thought I had the exact same thought.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

You know, because at first you go, oh, she had has a replacement father figure, blah blah blah blah. And then it's like, well, whoa, wait a second.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Oh yeah, exactly. Because I'm like, oh, she's going to examine that, right? She's gonna be like, oh no, I'm missing my daddy, and he's like the father figure. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, you're gonna go off underneath the oak tree. And okay, yeah, that was uh dislike, thumbs down.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Right, yeah. That was yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

I wasn't gonna bring it up, but I was just like, um Yeah, no, I think it it's something that needs to be addressed because it's it is present in the book. Yeah, we can make excuses for it, but yeah, I I'm not a big fan of that aspect of the story.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

Yeah, no, I know that no.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Dislike.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

Dislike. So yeah, so it drops it down to a nine out of ten.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah, with the yeah, well, I mean, she's 18, it's not statutory, right? But still, man, there's a 40-year age difference that we need to that we can't overlook.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

All right, well, uh we're getting to be about to the end of our time. You have some uh final thoughts for us, Maurice.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

Well, I think I uh sort of uh uh already talked about uh in terms of uh you know what what what does it look like for a community to uh you know be self-sustaining, to uh what are the elements it needs to uh move through the these sort of difficult times? But I mean that that is is what we've been talking about, this how parable the soul and why it's mandatory reading in our organization. It's like what do books like this, the dystopian novels, the afro-pessimistic uh novels, uh they they do offer blueprints.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:53

They offer uh and and blueprints for how to move through spaces, they offer uh pathways to resilience, uh and allows you to think through all right, here here's here's what we need in order to be prepared, to to have contingency plans, to back to uh to Joanna's uh to the discussion with Joanna. What does it mean to look realistically at the world around you and yet not be scared? Because it's very easy to look around the world around us right now and feel hopeless. It's very easy for us to look around the world and go and be overwhelmed and and and and be scared. That is part of the playbook that we were talking about earlier. But it's the the playbook that is designed to overwhelm and make you feel hopeless and and to make you feel scared and powerless and powerless and to get you to a spot where you no longer are dreaming, you're just worried about survival.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

That's the playbook. So then what does it mean to realistically look at the world around you and then go, hey, I'm not gonna play by your playbook. I'm going to continue to dream, and part of continuing to dream means continuing to plan, and part of continuing to plan means what does it mean to build a community and move not as an individual or series of individuals, but move as a group.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Kind of the uh be scared, but but do it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

But do it anyway. That's resilience in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

There you go. Look at that. All right, Maurice, I think that's a perfect note to end on. I want to thank you so much for joining me. I, you know, obviously we've known each other for years, and I always love chatting with you, so I'm super happy that we we got to read this book and talk about it. And do not be surprised if I rope you into my lair again for another title. Surprise! Surprise! I've got some middle grade titles on there, man. We can we can dig into.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

Okay, okay, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

All right, well, again, thank you for Maurice for joining us. And I also want to thank you to all the listeners out there for hanging out. Make sure to check out our Patreon page. Subscribers get a sneak peek at our lineup and can listen to the podcast before the rest of the peons can. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And hey, tell your friends about us. This is Kelly Swales, and you've been listening to Bard Books. Catch you next time.