Recently, I’ve found myself falling back into my middle school routine of reading every dystopian book I can find. Whether it’s prompted by the dystopia-themed escape room I’ve been working on at Des Moines Public Library, or the fact Parable of the Sower was one of the most requested books at DMPL in January — despite being published more than 30 years ago — these books have been offering me a nostalgic escape from my day to day.
While my planned escape room is inspired by older classics such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, I have gravitated to rereading Octavia Butler’s Parable series. The first book, Parable of the Sower, follows Lauren, a teen growing up in a near-future southern California community. Lauren has a condition which makes her hypersensitive to the emotions and pain of others, leaving her especially susceptible to the increasingly unstable society around her.
Though published in 1993, the topics brought up in the novel, like climate change and community, are still urgent. It’s no wonder that in 2006, Butler herself told The Indypendent that the Parable books “serve as cautionary tales,” and the series “calls people’s attention to the fact that so much needs to be done.”
Almost a decade later, Suzanne Collins, author of the bestselling Hunger Games trilogy, spoke similarly. She told Scholastic in 2014 that “telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times.”
The original trilogy holds a special place in my heart, introducing me to other books in the genre like Uglies by Scott Westerfeld and Scythe by Neal Schusterman. But Collins’ 2020 installment, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was my favorite from the moment I picked it up. In it, we learn more about the origins of the Hunger Games and one of the primary villains of the original trilogy, Coriolanus Snow. It doesn’t fall into the trope of attempting to make the villain a sympathetic character, but Snow is still engaging enough to follow through the 500-plus-page novel.
Her forthcoming novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is out in March, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Arlette Uribe-Gonzalez is a library assistant at the Des Moines Public Library. She spends her time knitting, snuggling with her cats, or stumbling across new hobbies (see: obsessions). This article was originally published in Little Village’s March 2025 issue.
