Welcome to the Underground Bookshelf Book Club! Throughout the month of January, we are reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler. This book is the second in the Earthseed Books Duology. We read Parable of the Sower in December. If you would like to go back and review the questions from December, click here.
Parable of the Talents is a book of speculative fiction. Originally published in 1998, This book is set in California in the early 2020s. After losing her family, her home, and everything she knows, Lauren Olamina settles on the property owned by her new husband and begins to build a new community called Acorn, founded in Earthseed, a belief system of her own design. Her community struggles to survive when representatives of a White, Christian supremacist organization attacks Acorn and turns their home into a labor and reeducation camp. This book is written from the perspective of Olamina's daughter, Larkin, who studies her mother's journals.
I really love this author and her work and I look forward to sharing discussion prompts for this book throughout the month. If you're having trouble finding this book in your area, Parable of the Talents is available on Internet Archive or you can use WorldCat or LibraryLink to search for this book at a library near you.
Week 1
Image Description: A photo of the front cover of Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. A Black woman with cornrows stares straight ahead. Superimposed over her legs in the lower thirds is a collection of people standing somberly behind a fence.
Welcome back to the Underground Bookshelf Book Club. Throughout January, we are reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. This is the second book in the Earthseed Books Duology. Today's discussion prompt comes from the Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion in the Warner Books Edition copyrighted in the year 2000 by Octavia Butler and Warner Books, Incorporated. This prompt stems from the author's view of the book. So here we go.
"Jenn Trust and Teri Mae Rutledge, reviewers for the "Feminist Bookstore Newsletter," said Parable of the Talents "is about slavery and survival, alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality." The author has said that Talents is intended to be a novel of solutions: "When I say solutions, I don't mean the perfect solution, because there isn't one. But the kind of solutions that people reach for when they are desperate, when they are frightened, when they are looking around." What solutions do you see the author exploring through the characters in this book? What do you think this teaches us about people? Do you think there is a singular solution to the worlds problems? What do you feel the world's problems are?"
Week 2
Welcome back to the Underground Bookshelf Book Club. Throughout January, we are reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. This is the Second book in the Earthseed Books Duology. Today's discussion prompt comes from the Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion in the Warner Books Edition copyrighted in the year 2000 by Octavia Butler and Warner Books, Incorporated.
"Olamina's daughter, Larkin, is resentful because she believes that Earthseed is more important to her mother than family was. After all, her mother had an opportunity to move with her husband and child to an isolated coastal town and start a new life that could possibly have been safer. Do you agree or disagree with Olamina's choice to stay in Acorn and remain committed to her beliefs and ideals and to the community she founded? Which responsibility is greater?"
Week 3
Welcome back to the Underground Bookshelf Book Club. Throughout January we have been reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. This is the second book in the Earthseed Books Duology. Today's discussion prompts come from the Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion in the Warner Books Edition copyrighted in the year 2000 by Octavia Butler and Warner Books, Incorporated.
Considering the events that happen to Acorn and its people: "Do you think the author is making a statement about how problems in a society can reflect or be attributed to the problems of the past? How does a nation escape a past tragedy? Can they ever succeed?"
Secondly: "What statements about family is the author making in terms of Lauren Olamina's childhood when compared to Larkin/Asha Vere's childhood, as well as the family structure set up in Acorn before it was dismantled?"
Thanks for stopping by! In February, we will read the children's chapter books, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia and Jennifer, Hecate, William-McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg. See you then!
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