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Common Read 2025: Parable of the Sower

Black and pink text on a cream background reads: Common Read 2025: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. In the center is a stylized illustration of a Black woman in pink and orange clothing.

What is a "Common Read?"

 

Black and pink text on a cream background reads "Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it's precious too."Good question!

Every year, the college selects a book that features important themes or perspectives to be the "Common Read." That book is then read by a large portion of the Mount Holyoke community, especially first year students, and provides the basis for a variety of classroom discussions and campus events over the course of the year. This year, the book selected is Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

From the information page about the Common Read (which also features a list of past Common Reads): 

The annual Common Read is designed to give students new to Mount Holyoke College their first intellectual dialogue based on a shared text. New students start to explore the selected text during Orientation and continue the discussion into their fall classes and throughout the year.

Open to the entire College community to read and discuss — staff on campus and alum groups across the country discuss the book — the Common Read sets the tone and frames discussions for the upcoming academic year.

Current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alums and trustees are invited to participate.

 

About Parable of the Sower

 

Cover image of the book "Parable of the Sower"Book Description

When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

 

Availability

  • Numerous copies of the print book are available for checkout at the Circulation Desk in LITS.
  • 3 ebook copies are available for one user at a time (MHC login may be required).
  • An ebook of the graphic novel is available for unlimited simultaneous users.
  • An audiobook version (and another ebook version) is available on the Libby App through the Boston Public Library (requires a Boston Public Library eCard, which is free to anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Massachusetts). For assistance or more information, contact Research Services. 

 

About the Author, Octavia E. Butler

 

Black and white author portrait of Octavia E. Butler.

Bio excerpt and image from the author's website: 

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother.  She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

Though the MacArthur Grant made life easier in later years, she struggled for decades when her dystopian novels exploring themes of Black injustice, global warming, women’s rights and political disparity were, to say the least, not in commercial demand. 

During these years of obscurity Butler, always an early riser, woke at 2 a.m. every day to write, and then went to work as a telemarketer, potato chip inspector, and dishwasher, among other things. 

She passed away on February 24, 2006. At the time of her death, interest in her books was beginning to rise, and in recent years, sales of her books have increased enormously as the issues she addressed in her Afro-Futuristic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant.

 

Guided Reading Questions

Pink and black text on a cream background reads: Your teachers are all around you." Below the text are tumbling books, and above the text is a flying bird.The Great Questions Foundation has put together a page that explores the text of Parable of the Sower, including a number of excellent guided reading questions. We've reproduced them below, and hope they may be useful to you as you engage with the text.

  • What is something you believe which is challenging to believe? Explain in detail why believing that is challenging and why you continue to believe it? 
     
  • What would it take for you to believe someone who claimed to know something about God?
     
  • In Chapter 6, Lauren’s father argues that, “it is better to teach people than to scare them.”
    What is his argument for this? When have you scared others about something which you could have taught them? 
     
  • In Chapter 20, we read that Laurn observes that some who gain power over others, “will enjoy their new power – the power to make other submit, the power to take what they want – property, sex, life . . . .”
    If you were in a position of power over another, such that you could take anything you wanted from them, are you sure that you would not? How do you know you would not enjoy having that power? What can societies do to make it less likely that people who would can? 
     
  • When are people in this text treated as means to an end and when are they treated as ends in themselves?
    When have you treated someone else as a means to an end rather than an end in itself? What is the difference? 
     
  • We encounter the “Pyros” throughout this text, who, possessed by a drug, put on costumes of diversity before entering into an ecstatic orgy of murder and immolation, which they understand as justice.
    What ideological narcotics may motivate people today to consider destruction and the creation of mayhem as justice? 
     
  • In Chapter 22, Lauren says. “This world would be better if people lived according to the teachings of almost any religion.”
    What religious principles do you have or sympathize with that you think would make the world a better place if people actually lived according to them?

 

Additional Resources

In this part of the guide, we have made note of several resources that we think are useful companion pieces to the content of the book, offering additional context and information.

However, it should be noted that no list like this is ever complete, and we encourage you to continue seeking out information on your own if you are curious about the subject. If you would like assistance with that, contact Research Services in LITS!

 

Books

Articles & Essays

Videos

  • Octavia Butler Interview - Transcending Barriers
    • "In this interview, Ms. Butler discusses issues of race, class and sex in the science fiction genre as well as society at large. She also talks about her evolution as a writer and her experience with the Clarion Writers Workshop."

Websites

  • Octavia E. Butler
    • Official website for Octavia E. Butler, the author of the book Parable of the Sower.

Podcasts

  • Octavia's Parables
    • "Octavia’s Parables is a podcast where hosts Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown read the works of Octavia Butler one chapter at a time, bringing a modern analysis and scholarship to the work, and offering listeners guiding questions for applying the lessons in their own lives and community work."