I was thrilled to explore Octavia Butler’s climate-based dystopian novel Parable of the Sower multimodally by making my first-ever zine! The zine, titled EARTHSEED, takes the form of the protagonist's (Lauren's) journal. It includes a few different modalities, namely poetry verses written by the protagonist, graphic imagery, and visual commentary/ prose. By utilizing Octavia Butler's writing directly, I was able to place the journal of Lauren's deepest understandings in my reader's hands. Not only was this project enjoyable for my creative and visual brain, it also allowed me to further process my understanding of key concepts of this novel, and it could act as a great incentive for others to become interested in reading this book. I'd love to push my students to explore literary concepts through zines.
I framed the journey of this novel around the concept of survivance, which is a term used most often to describe the preservation and resistance of Native cultures threatened by colonialism. Decolonial Dictionary has a comprehensible description, but I also included my own in reference to Lauren’s survival on my 6th panel. This is just one of many lessons that can be applied to this and any novel appropriate multimodally. Parable of the Sower calls for its readers to stand together in diverse communities to overcome mobs of inhumanity and created disastrous environments, my zine underlines those ideas and pairs them with my visual notation process.
Below, I’ve included a transcript alongside my zine!
(Take root among the stars)
This turned out amazingly well, Greta. Kudos to you!! I hope that I get a chance to touch and page through it in person.
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