Hope Through Community

Environmental Studies major Adelaide Taylor ’27 joined members of Inland Empire community for a marathon read of “Parable of the Sower.” As she read aloud passages from the novel, Adelaide saw the parallel to current event.

“It really is coming true,” Adelaide said about the 1993 novel by Octavia E. Butler, set in a dystopian 2024 Southern California. “There’s a lot about wildfires and water shortages, and I think the takeaway is these environmental issues aren’t just science fiction – they are happening now.”

The current event was even more illustrated at the time of the read, due the nearby Line Fire, as it continued to consume more than 30,000 acres of the San Bernardino National Forest.

Part of the “Parable of the Sower” Project, English Professor Heather King put together the reading to keep the text “literally alive,” by gathering community for what she described as a “crowdsourced audiobook.”

“In the novel, forming community is important,” King said. “It's a means to salvation. It's a means to staying human, and so to share a book seems like a way to honor that impulse towards community in part of our programming around it.”

Part of the One City, One Book program, the novel is not only being read by those at U of R this fall but also by those in the city of Redlands. The reading has also expanded to other area campuses, like Riverside City College and Crafton Hills College. In addition to the themes of conflict, social inequity, and environmental disaster, readers reflected on the parallels of the novel to the realities of today.

“There is a section where they talk about the price of groceries being really high and it seems uncanny,” Crafton Hills College English Professor Edward Ferrari said. “There was a section about climate despair and this realization that the things that have changed about the world cannot be undone, and [we have to] come to terms with that.”

Though dystopian science fiction can at times be extreme, Ferrari emphasized that not all hope is or should be lost in our reality.

“I think dystopian fiction gets a bad rap for being depressing or hopeless,” Ferrari said. “But I think the message of the book is essentially that when a community comes together, you can change, adapt, and succeed in ways that are not just about surviving, but lead to different ways of thriving.”

In support of the marathon read, the Redlands community came together with various sponsorships and donations for those participating, highlighting what King says in an important part of the novel – empathy.

“There are scientific studies that show that reading makes us more empathetic,” King said. “Reading a book that talks so much about empathy, I think, has an additional effect of helping us think about the world and other people's shoes, including shoes we don't want to walk in.”

Upcoming events for the “Parable of the Sower” project include the One City, One Book discussion on October 15, at 6 p.m., at the Contemporary Club and the English Department’s Eaton Lecture featuring University of California, Riverside’s Professor of Media and Culture Studies, John Jennings on October 30, at 6 p.m., in Hall of Letters 100.

Click the link for additional information about the “Parable of the Sower” Project.