Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Published by Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993

I know I’m late to read this, and that even high school students have no read it as part of their classes, but I somehow hadn’t made time for this yet, and it seemed the perfect time to remedy that. 

I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, and Butler delivers a compelling and powerful story of a world that shatters, falling apart along fissures and fault lines of its own making. 

Along the way, we find wisdom through spirituality, the comfort and necessity of companionship, and the human need to care for others. 

This is worth all the wonderful things that have been said about it, and yes, it’s perfect as a required reading entry.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Short, stark, and compelling, this little book was originally published in French in 1995, and the first English translation published in 1997. It barely made a blip on the literature world, and then Vintage published it in2019 and Transit republished it in 2022. 

I found myself captivated by this matter of fact recitation of life on a distant place, a distant land, possibly a distant planet. The group of women, and the decisions made along the way, each reflect the idea of society and the weight that we give them (rightly or wrongly, as you may choose). There is no proselytizing, here, just the journey of one step after another to discover life and what makes it livable. 

By the end, I had come to love the narrator and cheer for her.