The Shepherd and the Sower by Lauren Pierre

Along the way, Lauren attracts other misfits, forming a rag-tag band that begins to learn Lauren’s philosophy of life and to trust her talent to stay alive.

Most of those things are still here, but no company will want us.'”īut as the wider chaos and brutality of the surrounding world come crashing through their gates, Lauren finds she must flee for her life, making her way by night and by foot along abandoned highways in the hope of finding safety farther north, somewhere where she will can live in peace. What it does have is street poor, body dumps, and a memory of once being well-off - of shade trees, big houses, hills, and canyons. “‘Robledo’s too big, too poor, too black, and too Hispanic to be of interest to anyone - and it has no coastline. Theirs is an alliance of proximity, of familiarity, and of necessity. Here people don’t leave the neighborhood’s walls alone or unarmed. Teenaged Lauren Olamina lives with her father, stepmother, and brothers in Robledo, a barricaded community outside of Los Angeles. In one of her most famous works, “Parable of the Sower”, Butler once again creates a dystopian, not-so-distant future in which war, famine, and disease have left few survivors in a volatile and violent world. Her brand of speculative fiction, generally one in which select humans have developed or acquired superhuman abilities of intellect and empathy – ESP, telekinesis, time travel, and hyperempathy – is the type I am more apt to enjoy than those that focus more on technology, aliens, and the like. Butler, one of the foremothers of Afrofuturism, wrote with power and force and a vision of a future for people of color long before the movement which she helped forge had many followers and fewer models.

“Strange how normal it’s become for us to lie on the ground and listen while nearby, people try to kill each other.”

The Shepherd and the Sower by Lauren Pierre