ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Moreno, Micah. “Survival by any means: Race and gender, passing and performance in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and parable of the talents.” Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler’s Work, 22 Nov. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46625-1_11

This piece criticizes how most dystopian fiction uses metaphors and analogies to deal with race/gender and gender/racial inequalities and shows how Butler directly tackles these issues. Butler’s lack of metaphors allows her to explore/compare how it impacts the past, present, and future of both the audience and the main character(s).

1. Clausen, Daniel D. “Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Western American Literature, vol. 56 no. 3, 2021, p. 269-286. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2021.0040.

Clausen describes what new aspects Parable of the Sower offers to the genre of dystopia fiction and how it differs from other novels in its genre. Mainly how Parable focuses on mutual community aid, agricultural economy, and information rather than the individualist mentality taken by other dystopian novel authors and their main characters.

1. Lea, Susan G. “Seeing beyond sameness: Using the giver to challenge colorblind ideology.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 51–67, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-005-9454-2.

Lea discusses how Lowry’s choice to depict the world of The Giver in black and white commentates on the actual harm colorblind ideology brings to people of color. In an effort to create sameness – which would supposedly create equality – the dominant force aka the Elders model the “perfect” human after themselves; cisgender, caucasian with Eurocentric features. They insist this “perfect person” doesn’t see race but in reality, it is erasing almost all aspects of people of color and implying that they are “wrong” for not complying with sameness.

1. Arnone, Chris M. “Why Are Dystopian Books So White?” Book Riot, 6 July 2023, https://bookriot.com/why-are-dystopian-books-so-white/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023. 

This article discusses the phenomenon of dystopian fiction’s severe lack of non-white protagonists and how what is considered dystopian to white audiences is a constant reality for many people of color. It also talks about how – due to their white privilege – white audiences have the luxury of using these books as escapism or putting an emotional distance between them and the work, unlike people of color.

1. Hintz, Carrie, et al. Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers. Routledge, 2015. 

Hintz points out the implications given by dystopian fiction that don’t divulge into race. Most often it is implied that people of color don’t exist in the pursuit of equality and sameness and in The Giver’s case, perpetuates the stereotype that racial minorities want to be white. Both uphold white privilege in what is supposed to be a utopia for all.

SOURCES

1. Clausen, Daniel D. “Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Western American Literature, vol. 56 no. 3, 2021, p. 269-286. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2021.0040.
2. MLA. Lowry, Lois, author. The Giver. Boston, Massachusetts :Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
3. Noyce, Phillip, director. The Giver. The Weinstein Company, 2014, https://archive.org/details/the-giver. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023. 
4. Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York :Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993.
5. Hintz, Carrie, et al. Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers. Routledge, 2015. 
6. 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, 16 Nov. 1999, https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.1999.0017. 
7. Moreno, Micah. “Survival by any means: Race and gender, passing and performance in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and parable of the talents.” Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler’s Work, 22 Nov. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46625-1_11. 
8. Lea, Susan G. “Seeing beyond sameness: Using the giver to challenge colorblind ideology.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 51–67, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-005-9454-2. 
9. Arnone, Chris M. “Why Are Dystopian Books So White?” Book Riot, 6 July 2023, https://bookriot.com/why-are-dystopian-books-so-white/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023. 

   My research process was fairly simple. First, I came up with a question that would be the basis of my paper. Afterward, I took out keywords and put them into Google, Google Scholar, and the Hunter Library website. For the articles within books that I would need to buy I went to zlibrary and found a copy of the book and highlighted the section I would need for later. After collecting all the articles I wanted to use, I researched the authors to evaluate how reputable their works were. I discarded the ones not made by established authors and/or from questionable origins. (ex. Personal blog posts). Finally, I downloaded the PDFs of my sources and sorted them into folders, one for articles related to The Giver, one for Parable of the Sower, and one for general YA fiction.

    As I read 10:04: A Novel, I was surprised that the perspective shifted back to Lerner instead of the character “The author”. I originally assumed that the first few chapters where Lerner reminisces and writes about his life was a sort of cold open that would segway into the fiction part of this auto-fiction novel. The rest of his life would be told through the filter of the “The author”, paralleling his real life and making it clear by alluding to the actual people described in the first two chapters with their fictional counterparts. This was not the case, and after reading this chapter I am thankful for that. As much as I poke fun at the book itself for appearing to fall into the oversaturated genre of autobiography that no one asked for, written by someone with a decent enough popularity in their little niche, this chapter did pique my interest after a second read. In it, Lerner and his agent discuss his book and why anyone would pay a large sum ahead of time for an unfinished novel. As his agent tries to put it as gently as possible, the proposal might be worth more than the book itself due to the prestige of his name and the popularity of his last book. As for why, Lerner explains it best;

    “This I understood, or at least recognized, from experience: most desire was imitative desire. If one university wanted to buy your papers, another university would want to buy them, too—consensus emerges regarding your importance. Competition produces its own object of desire; that’s why it makes sense to speak of a “competitive spirit,” a creative deity” (Lerner, Ben. “Three.” 10:04, p. 121) 

    Reputation and quantity over actual quality in the publishing world is something I’ve only been made aware of recently due to the rise of Booktok, a subcommunity in Tiktok. It’s a more modern phenomenon centered around feeding an algorithm, authors churning out novel after novel to keep their name circulating. My mind is currently drawing a blank at his name, I think his initials are JN but I could be wrong, but there currently is an author that falls heavily into this that has become rather infamous. From what I’ve read, many people who work in bookstores consider him a plague for his quantity-over-quality approach to writing. He isn’t hated just for the content of his works, but for the overabundance of it made in such a short time. While there is a section of people who do hate him there is an even larger majority that love his work and keep him a popular author. The man publishes faster than these stores and staff can keep up with yet people clamor for them and are upset when they run out just as quickly as they are made. This leads to many shipments for these stores consisting mainly of his works and taking up space that could’ve been used to promote fresh faces, people of color, and authors of other marginalized identities. Knowing this the practice feels so insidious, favoring those who are fast with big names at the very top of the industry while smaller authors have to rely on social media and word of mouth to compete.

How does Butler’s focus on marginalized people separate Parable of the Sower from other dystopian novels with more conventional protagonists such as The Giver?

    Starting 10:04: A Novel by Ben Lerner after reading Parable of the Sower and The Hungry Tide was quite the whiplash for me personally. I did a bit of searching about the book’s general plot before reading, nothing that dives deep into or spoils the plot, but I was very confused upon finding out the genre. I had never read a novel that is both autofiction and metafiction. I’ve heard both terms before, mostly to describe how a novel is subversive compared to others in its genres, but after reading a few pages I was still confused as to how this book fits the pattern of the books we’ve read so far. I honestly assumed I had downloaded the wrong book until I read the email stating that it was indeed the right book.

   With that in mind, I have noticed a few connections such as how time is an important factor in all three books. In Parable of the Sower and Hungry Tide, the passing of time brings on a sense of dread. The worlds in both books are crumbling, though in varying degrees due to the different schematics, and time does not stop to give the characters a chance to grieve or prepare for the inevitable. Time marches on, oftentimes for the worst, and all the characters of both The Hungry Tide and Sower can do is try to survive while living as normally as their world would let them. Time in 10:04 works differently. Yes, the main character has to deal with his ever-changing world as time flows but the actual way the narrative is written isn’t so straightforward. By that I mean Lerner jumps between different times in both his real life and his newest novel. The main character of his book only known as “the author” is both him and not him, his life a version of his that has been molded and twisted enough to shadow his current circumstances but not mirror them completely. One example is Alex – his friend in the real world – and her oral surgery. In his timeline, she is debating on whether or not to use local anesthetic or, in her words “ a heavier IV thing”. When discussing the pros and cons of both she says

“That’s the thing—I can’t remember. I asked my mom and she said she thought I did something heavier. Apparently if you do the IV sedation it induces amnesia. That’s why so many people have trouble remembering what they did. The difference isn’t really in how much pain you experience but in whether you remember it.” (Lerner, Ben. “One.” 10:04, p. 44)

    A typical novel would have this plotline wrapped up later on in the novel either by the author’s first account of the event or being told what happened after by another person, but not in this book. This plotline is explored with the character referred to only as “the author”, not with the outside perspective Lerner has but as the patient. The conversation over what anesthetic the author should use is skipped, as it occurred already in Lerner’s real life, and it instead switches to the actual operation. In the author’s story, it is emphasized how the sedation will erase certain memories, and the consequences Alex could face are shifted onto the author and are applied to his life. On the ride home, after seeing the beautiful lower Manhattan skyline and the rare intimacy between him and Liza – Lerner’s stand-in for Alex – the author realizes

“I won’t remember this. This is the most beautiful view of the city I have ever seen, the most perfect experience of touch and speed, I’ve never felt so close to Liza, and I won’t remember it; the drugs will erase it. And then, glowing with the aura of imminent disappearance, it really was the most beautiful view, experience. He wanted badly to describe this situation to Liza but couldn’t: his tongue was still numb; he couldn’t even ask her to remind him of what the drugs would erase”  (Lerner, Ben. “One.” 10:04, p. 65)

   The author’s moment of intimacy with Liza could reflect on an event that happened earlier in the book, where he and Alex are sharing the apartment during a storm. Alex has fallen asleep watching a movie and Lerner and while he doesn’t say it in words it is implied there are some romantic feelings involved on his end. Lerner brings this event forward in time and mixes it with a more current event and uses the latter to explore his complex feelings about the earlier moment in his own life through the author.