Neurodivergent Futures: Community, Vulnerability, and Social Change in Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed series

In this essay, I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) through a neurodivergent lens. The main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, is a sharer: she has hyperempathy syndrome (HS), a minority neurotype which entails feeling pain and pleasure shown by others. Sharers coexist with a majority of neurotypical people and, like neurodivergence, present variations in ‘cognitive, affectual, and sensory functioning’ (Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist et al. 2020: 1). The representation of hyperempathy in the novel is medically framed and generally mirrors non-fictional discrimination and stereotypes towards disability, mental illness and neurodivergence. Through Olamina’s point of view, however, Butler creatively intervenes in this narrative fabric, anticipating the neurodiversity paradigm.