Annotated Bibliography

• 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. 

Like the previous article, this one also does a better job at analyzing the political and socioeconomic impact on LA during the time. However, using that information, I can tie   it to the effects of drug use.

• Govan, Sandra. “THE PARABLE OF THE SOwER AS REnDERED BY OCTAVIA BUTLER: LESSOnS FOR OUR CHAnGInG TImES.” Femspec, vol. 4, no. 2, 2003, pp. 239. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/parable-sower-as-rendered-octavia-butler-lessons/docview/200166258/se-2. 

The article addresses the socioeconomic and political issues surrounding the time period. Due to this, according to the article, Lauren is forced to then separate herself and her community from such a catastrophe. The rampant drug use and cycle of violent crime triggers her hyperempathy beyond anything that she can fix. Because the sphere has become impossible to live in, she creates Earthseed to counteract the already devastated state of Robledo.

• S. Lavanya. (2023). Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as the Pyro Epidemic Novel. Creative Saplings, 2(08), 1–9. Retrieved from https://creativesaplings.in/index.php/1/article/view/444 

The article talks briefly about the definition of crack and what it does to people once they get sucked into the cycle of addiction. From there the author takes the article in a direction that analyzes the pre existing flaws in humans that enhance the devastation caused by crack intake. Further down, it mentions the relation between crack/heroin and the rise in violent crime due to the effects of the drug on the human body and mind. 

• Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1998, pp. 336–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.  Accessed 30 Nov. 2023. (pg 15)

The pyro drug that fuels political insurrection from the dirt poor directs their anger toward the wrong people. While they intend to “burn the rich”, they instead burn those that are comparatively poor to those on top. This issue not only addresses the issue of political instability, but also socioeconomic status, or rather the blurriness of such to those at the very bottom. Around the bottom of page 15 specifically comments on the cycle of devastation that crime and drug addiction has on LA during the time. This article provides great evidence toward my argument of the catastrophic drug/crack epidemic on LA in the 80s and 90s and how that affected the hierarchy of politics and socioeconomic development.

• 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 30 Nov. 2023.

This article also recognizes the disturbing effects of the living situation within the period of the novel due to the organization, or lack thereof, of people within their own communities and of the government. I think this article does more in analyzing the socioeconomic aspect of the area during that time, but mentions less about the effects of drugs and addiction.

• 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 30 Nov. 2023.

This article like the others, emphasizes the effects of drug use on the LA region during the 1980s and 90s. However, this article mentions that due to the lack of “operative enforcement of public order”, it is almost guaranteed that most people know someone that is killed or affected by the devastation of drug use and addiction/its side effects (crime). He mentions how those stuck in the circle involved in drug use are trapped mostly physically and theoretically because they have nowhere to go. All their family/community is there, but they’re also being physically kept there by the lack of social order.

Research Question: How does Butler’s Parable of the Sower navigate the impact of the drug epidemic on the socioeconomic, political, and environmentalist sphere?

Research question: How does Butler’s Parable of the Sower navigate the impact of the crack epidemic on the socioeconomic, political, and environmentalist sphere during the 1990s?

• Agar, Michael. “The Story of Crack: Towards a Theory of Illicit Drug Trends.” Addiction Research & Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, 2003, pp. 3–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/1606635021000059042.

• Flamini, Alessandro, et al. “Illegal Drugs and Public Corruption: Crack Based Evidence from California.” EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, vol. 69, 2021, pp. 102005-, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102005.

• Murch, Donna. “Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs.” The Journal of American History (Bloomington, Ind.), vol. 102, no. 1, 2015, pp. 162–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav260.

• Bourgois, Philippe. “Crack and the Political Economy of Social Suffering.” Addiction Research & Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, 2003, pp. 31–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/1606635021000021322. 
• Acker, Caroline Jean. “How Crack Found a Niche in the American Ghetto: The Historical Epidemiology of Drug-Related Harm.” BioSocieties, vol. 5, no. 1, 2010, pp. 70–88, https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2009.1. 
• Dunlap, Eloise, et al. “The Severely-Distressed African American Family in the Crack Era: Empowerment Is Not Enough.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, vol. 33, no. 1, 2006, pp. 115–39, https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.3138. 

My research process turned out to be more difficult than I’d originally expected because the key terms that I’d been putting into google scholar and JSTOR weren’t outputting results that would aid in my research. With that, I had to alter some parts of my research question to better fit. I narrowed it down to focus only on the decade in which the novel was written and instead of trying to encompass such a large topic, I decided to focus on one impact on the sphere of interest. The key search terms I used included: crack epidemic, (southern) California, 1990s, politics, environment(alism), and socioeconomics. I lucked out that most, if not all, of my sources were peer-reviewed and available through the Hunter library.

How does Butler’s Parable of the Sower act as a tool to navigate the socioeconomic, political, and environmentalist sphere during the 1990s v. modern day?

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower proposes a reality that, like the adults in the novel, people wouldn’t consciously think to materialize. It’s a world filled with poverty stricken drug addicts, flying crime rates, and living conditions that could scare even the most dangerous. 

Butler’s dystopian universe seems so out of touch for us, even as we approach 2024 quickly. However, the use of the words “could” and “would”  further reinforces Nixon’s concept of slow violence. Such an end result of cities “trashed, burned, vandalized, infested with drunks or druggies or squatted in by homeless families with their filthy, gaunt, half-naked children” (10) that seems unfathomable is manifesting right in our faces. The streets of the city show signs of heading straight into such a reality. All those issues, like climate change and rising rates of crime/homelessness, that people refuse to treat with a sense of urgency are beginning to creep up on them with a vengeance. 

Like Nixon’s slow violence, Haraway’s Cthlulucene is a great paradigm for the unknown nature of each day to come in the novel. Her description of it involves the “past, present, and to come.”Butler’s novel provides the same depiction of the three. Her relatives give their recantations of the past where life was safe and relatively livable. During that time, they were still able to walk outside without having to fear for their lives and safety. They wish “to relive the good old days or to tell kids how great it’s going to be when the country gets back on its feet and good times come back,” (8).The present time involves a constant state of distress whenever the protagonist, Lauren, or her family, is faced with stepping out of the house. They cannot lower their guard, and a rule of thumb was to “go out in a bunch, and go armed,” (8). The environment is so riddled with danger that no person from any class higher than those on the streets would dare trek on their own. 

Additionally, Butler’s novel satisfies the arguments that Ghosh makes about incorporating climate change and the like into works of fiction. It illustrates the devastating events that result from the immense lack of awareness and precaution toward climate change. Ironically, Lauren also tries to emphasize the importance of “any kind of survival information…Even some fiction might be useful,” (59). In her situation, the importance of accessing any sort of information regarding their chances at survival are of utmost urgency. Yet, we could consider doing the same as to prevent any similar dystopia from possibly materializing and put a halt to slow violence.