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In case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in an Octavia Butler novel. The fires the queen of Afrofuturism predicted would ravage Los Angeles in 2025? They showed up. That political chaos she wrote about in “Parable of the Sower”? Currently trending.
Indeed, “Sower,” Butler’s 1993 tale of a young Black woman navigating a collapsing society, feels less like fiction and more like a roadmap for survival. So it’s no wonder that, because of Butler’s now-apparent prescience of today’s doomscrolling climate, more people are calling attention to her work.
“She was really paying attention,” bestselling author, TV writer, and creative writing professor Tananarive Due says in a Zoom interview. “So they say, to be a prophet, you just have to pay attention, and she…could not look away. And because she could not look away, she was often very frightened about our future, just to be frank about it.”
But Butler’s stories are more than just eerily accurate predictions — they’re a way to imagine alternate realities through a Black cultural lens.
Due, who teaches a “Black Horror and Afrofuturism” class at UCLA, calls “Parable of the Sower,” an admittedly “difficult” book — and a hallmark in Afrofuturist study.
She and her husband, fellow writer Steven Barnes, knew Butler personally and view her writing as a call to action to create a future based on community, healing, and liberation.
“We’re forcing ourselves to create an island within which we can create in the midst of chaos,” said Barnes — and that is what Octavia did.
Stress and racial trauma are everywhere for Black folks.
To that end, Barnes and Due are both taking pen to page in these chaotic times — and teaching others how to do it, too. The couple, who also podcasts and vlogs together, uses the work of Butler and other writers, including “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury, as guides for their lessons.
“I want to teach you guys how to use, create, and consume art to save your hearts in the midst of stress,” Barnes told a class of more than 100 participants via Zoom recently.
Stress and racial trauma are everywhere for Black folks: a world-shifting election that disappointed supporters of Kamala Haris, and the subsequent inauguration of President Trump that resulted in a number of controversial executive orders. Then there’s a number of world events — including actions toward a ceasefire in Gaza and devastating fires across greater Los Angeles that razed Altadena, a beloved Black community where Butler lived and is buried, to the ground.
Butler herself battled depression while writing more than a dozen books about the future. “Sower” wasn’t a bestseller during her lifetime before she died in 2006, but it has seen jumps in sales as calamities and crises keep recurring. The novel debuted on the New York Times Best Sellers List in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the book takes place decades after its publication, and though the societies in Butler’s worldview technologically evolved, old attitudes regarding racism and sexism remained — or intensified.
Butler’s work isn’t just about the horrors of dystopia, though. Many of her books talk about “standing up to power structures big and small,” Due says.
One of the most quoted lines from “Parable of the Sower” is: “Everything you touch, you change; everything you change changes you; the only lasting truth is change; God changes you.”
For Due, that line became a lifeline after the 2016 presidential election.
“It was literally those words that helped snap me out of disbelief,” Due said in the class. “I’ve heard it said that one of the aspects of grief that makes it harder to move on is that we keep rolling around this idea that ‘this can’t be happening. this can’t be real, this can’t be happening.’ And when I realize that the only lasting truth is change, as it pertains to this election, I could move to the next phase…to figure out, ‘OK, now what are we going to do?’”
Answering that question is at the heart of Afrofuturism and critical to envisioning a future without the yoke of anti-Blackness.
You can’t solve a problem until you identify it.
TANANARIVE DUE
Although Barnes and Due’s advice during the workshop is geared toward writers looking to publish, it could also apply to those just trying to navigate violent deportations and push notifications about the end of DEI through journaling or other creative thought work. And, of course, there is just the appreciation of Butler’s foresight and using it as a compass — a reminder that liberation begins with healing and clarity.
“What we can learn from her work [is] naming the problem,” Due says. “You can’t solve a problem until you identify it. That’s the part where you have to move out of the disbelief….and that cognitive dissonance is frankly what chaos agents want us to feel.”
When every headline is “more absurd than the last one,” Due says we “have to really identify what actually matters, what we really need to be enraged about,” rather than getting angry about everything we see on social media.
“Every nonsense thing we hear” distracts us from “a call to take action,” Due adds. “Actions can be big or small — whether it’s building families, neighborhoods, [or] community in the face of adversity.”
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“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, examines the issues and what’s at stake for Black America.
There’s so much going on right now that it’s impossible to keep track of it all, and that’s the point. They want us to be overwhelmed so we can’t keep up or fight back, but today, I want to give you 10 action steps you can take to stay engaged, make a difference, and protect your peace.
And we’ve only just begun. So what are we going to do about it?
I spent four years covering the previous Trump administration as a political commentator for CNN, and it was exhausting. Nearly every day, there was a reckless tweet, an unvetted announcement, or a new law or norm broken. What I learned is that Trump is a chaos agent who needs as many distractions as possible to stay in power.
So here are 10 action steps we can take to stay focused, not just to survive the next four years, but to win the future.
1. Stay informed but not overwhelmed.
We cannot tune out and sleepwalk into fascism, but neither can we allow ourselves to become depressed by the enormity of the challenge. So don’t try to do everything. Start by following your expertise and interests. Focus on issues important to you. And protect your peace by stepping back from all the trees in front of you so you can see the larger forest.
2. Share truthful, factual information with friends, family, and followers.
Part of the reason Trump is in office today is because the right wing built a media infrastructure to serve as an echo chamber of lies and misinformation. It’s your job not to recirculate that propaganda. Instead, seek out reliable truthtellers and factual posts. Share them regularly and widely with your friends, family, and social media followers. Do not share misinformation unless you’re rebutting it.
3. Raise your voice to elected officials.
I know it’s old-fashioned, but visit the offices of the people representing you or write a letter. A study by the OpenGov Foundation during the first Trump administration found that in-person visits, personal letters, and social media were the best tools for being heard by members of Congress. Share a personal story of how an issue affects you. “The more effort a constituent puts in, the more engagement and impact they can expect,” the study found.
The people in Congress, your state legislature, and city council are no smarter than you. So launch your campaign. Talk about the issues that resonate with you and your community. Raise some money. And run for office.
5. Go to court.
If you’re a state attorney general or practicing attorney, you’ve probably already thought of this. But even if you’re a government worker, a federal contractor, or a private citizen adversely affected by right-wing MAGA policies, call a lawyer, and sue for your rights.
6. Reward the good.
We have economic power in where we spend our dollars. In the face of the current anti-Black assault, some companies, like Costco, Delta Airlines, Patagonia, Apple, Pinterest, and even JPMorganChase are standing behind their DEI programs. Support Black-owned businesses that are down for the cause and businesses that support you. And donate to nonprofits and organizations that work on issues important to you. If you’re not ready to boycott, try a “buycott” or a “buy-in.”
7. Punish the bad.
The list of companies capitulating to MAGA’s anti-DEI threats is long. Target, Walmart, Meta, McDonald’s, Ford, Coors, Amazon, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, and others are rolling back their DEI programs. Some are easy to quit, but others are integrated into our lives, making it difficult to cut them off completely.
So let’s organize creatively to develop new ways to make an impact. We may not get everyone to participate in an endless boycott of all these companies, but we can create targeted campaigns that leverage pressure points to achieve specific goals.
Let’s get busy now with voter registration and education campaigns. (Photo by Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)
8. Create a conscious culture.
Now more than ever, we need music, film, art, TV, culture, and institutions that reflect and protect us. If you have that platform, don’t be afraid to use it to tell our stories. And if you’re not an artist or a content creator, support those who are.
9. Organize for the short term.
Donald Trump is a 78-year-old man term limited by the Constitution. We have special elections, gubernatorial elections, and mayoral elections taking place this year, midterm elections in 2026, and another presidential election in 2028. We can’t wait until the last minute to organize, so let’s get busy now with voter registration and education campaigns instead of scrambling to pull it together in the final few months of the next election.
10. Plan for the long game.
The crisis we’re in right now didn’t happen overnight. Right-wing conservatives have spent the past century slowly plotting to roll back the workers’ rights gains of the 1930s, the civil rights gains of the 1960s, the women’s rights gains of the 1970s, and the LGBT rights gains of the 2000s.
Conservatives knew that presidents, senators, and members of Congress come and go, but long-term control of the Supreme Court would set us back. Now they have it, and it’s our job to develop our own long-term strategy, build our own media infrastructure, and create a different future.
These 10 steps are just a starting point. But we can do this — and so much more. Now, let’s get to work.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
