Parable of the Talents

At the beginning I forced myself to read "Parable of the Talents" like a bitter medicine. But at the end I avidly rushed through it, as all good novels make you.

The only science fiction I had read so far was of the conventional, classic kind: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick. All white males. Different kinds of writing, sure, but none of them has ever shocked me. Dick annoyed me. Bradbury touched me. Clark, of which I read little, and above all Asimov, of which I read almost all, fascinated me. I don't know what comes first, my love for Asimov's future history or my desire to sneak a peak in the year 30,000. I don't know if it is since I read Asimov as a teen that my only reason to be bothered by my mortality, and the lack of belief in an afterlife, is that I can't see the future, or if it is the latter that lead me to like Asimov's stories so much.
But in any case for me SF has always been mainly what it is in Asimov: exploring the potentialities of human race and celebrating its many, rich, fruitful talents. The last book of the Foundation cycle, which as a teen I used to find boring, has captured me at last. I finally understood and enjoyed its exploration of the possibility of human living in complete harmony with all nature, as a whole, complex organism. I still find it a little weighty in the style, showing how hard it is to reconcile philosophical thought with literature, but I mind that less, now that I understand its meaning.
Asimov's themes and narrations, as for any other writer, show his personal growth and aging. His first novels are all about strong-minded, bright white young men. Except of course, for the cold, ageless, unattractive, masculine Susan Calvin. But, progressively, young attractive white females become protagonists. One of them is, in Foundation and Earth, Bliss, the Gaian spokesperson for Galaxia, the living galaxy. Some of her passionate pleas in favor of it resound of claims of what is called in philosophy the Ethics of Care. Bliss is loved by the much older intellectual Pelorat, with whom I suspect Asimov identified quite a bit. Older men and young bright women populate also the later Foundation novels.
And yet, also these late novels express Asimov's solar optimisism: justice will triumph, humanity will ultimately rise, technology will eventually be in harmony with nature. This is not a surprising poetic. Asimov exemplifies the American dream, son of poor Russian emigrates, family of humble origins, he became an immensely popular and I imagine pretty wealthy writer.

I don't know much of the biography of Octavia Butler. I know that she was an Afro-american woman raised in a struggling environment. Anyway, even if she had come from a wealthy family, being a black woman in the sixties would have given her enough to struggle with.
Her SF is radically different from Asimov, and the talents she concentrates on are as much on the dark as on the bright side, if not more. The only novel I read so far has given me nightmares. After the first 40 pages, nauseated and sick of sadness, I realized I was reading the dramatized account of people who live now. Either in other countries, or in parts of the country I do not have access to: children who are bought in Haiti for fifty bucks, and used as domestic slaves, or for sexual purposes, or both, even in the US; young women abducted from their homes or lured with the promise of a better life, raped, and forced to work as prostitutes; homeless people who die in the streets in front of bystanders averting their eye. Modern slavery, poverty, war and torture are reality. And we know about it. Exactly like many good poeple in the book.
In the book there is also part of recent history: camps of forced labor and abuse, in which people are brought under false accusations, and never leave alive; in which prisoners turn against each other and lose their humanity; camps supported by society because they get rid of its filth.
Eventually, there are bits of news that we tend to forget about, like the idea of putting a controlling electronic device around inmates' legs, rather than putting them in jail. Devices that sinisterly resemble the lethal collars that torture slaves and inhibit their will in Butler's novel.
But once I got myself to read the entire book, I find its conclusion even more unsettling than the horrible scenario it forced in front of my eyes, both the fictional and the real one. And more admirable in terms of literary force.
The novel is mainly composed by the journal of the protagonist, the strong-willed, indomitable Black woman Olamina, and the comments by her daughter Larkin, separated from her a little after birth. Larkin, who changed her name into Asha Vere, is the main narrator. Traditionally, the reader is supposed to rely on the narrators' claims. Her very name, as Butler subtly makes clear at some point, refers to Truth. And Asha's point of view is very harsh toward Olamina. She accuses her of having abandoned her, of not really having looked for her, of caring less of her daugther than of her cult, Earhtseed, the new religion that Olamina has founded and that looks at the future in the stars with Asimovian hope. Olamina, in her daughter's words, is a fanatic, or in any case has the stereotypically masculine features of courage, political leadership, availability to sacrifice anything for the an ideal.

And yet the reader has access to Olamina's own writings, that Asha herself provides us with. We know what kind of background Asha has grew up in. One in which women are not allowed to preach, as Olamina does; in which she has learned to worship the incredibly good-looking uncle, who happens to be a preacher for the Christian sect that has enslaved her mother; one in which too many questions cannot be asked, because answers would be too painful for all.
Hence we know that we cannot trust Asha too much. We have read of Olamina's incredible passion for truth, her compassion and strength, her endurance to sufferance. We know that her seductive capacities, that Asha fears and despises, are always exercised in order to give people better lives.

If Asha's words do not allow us to worship someone like Olamina and be aware of the personal character traits that lie behind ideals, Olamina's words remind us of the easiness with which we choose to care more about our personal welfare in spite of something greater that may be accomplished. The exchange shows on the one side the complexity of truth, and on the other side, not less interestingly, the painful interaction of mother and child, made of conflicting expectations, demands, needs and desires, that is bound to take place even though they never have been together.

There are many other valuable things in this novel (such as the reflection on the role of religion in human life), but its unsettling conclusion-- humanity conquering the stars thanks to a stubborn black woman, who is rejected by her own only child-- is maybe the one that makes it so different from every other science fiction I have read.