SURVIVAL BY ANY MEANS:

RACE AND GENDER, PASSING AND PERFORMANCE IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S

PARABLE OF THE SOWER AND PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

by

Micah R. Moreno

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

December 2017
Copyright 2017 by Micah Moreno

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge Florida Atlantic University English faculty for

providing the foundation upon which this this thesis was built. In addition, the author

wishes to extend sincere gratitude to the supervisory committee for their patience and

guidance throughout the process. Finally, this thesis would not have been possible

without input and encouragement from family, friends, and colleagues.

iv
 ABSTRACT

Author: Micah Moreno

Title: Survival by Any Means: Race and Gender, Passing and

Performance in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable
of the Talents

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Sika Dagbovie-Mullins

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2017

This project focuses on race and gender in the works of author Octavia Butler.

The primary texts analyzed are Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. In these

novels, Butler alludes to slavery in antebellum America by drawing strong parallels

between the roles race and gender played in the survival of the escaped slaves of

America’s past and the role they play in the survival of the main character of Butler’s

apocalyptic future. The themes of race and gender frequently intersect and maintain an

important role throughout the novels. I argue that, by reading Butler’s novels within this

significant historical context, Butler’s use of passing as a tool for subverting both racial

and gendered identity as a means to secure the safety and privilege necessary for survival

emerges. Further, the parallels between racial and gender passing serve to expose the

performative nature of these identifying characteristics.

v
 DEDICATION

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have

strong wings.”

-Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I dedicate this thesis to all birds with strong wings.

 SURVIVAL BY ANY MEANS:

RACE AND GENDER, PASSING AND PERFORMANCE IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S

PARABLE OF THE SOWER AND PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

Introduction: Passing and Performance ...............................................................................1

Passing: An Overview ......................................................................................................3

Performance Theory .........................................................................................................8

Intersectionality ..............................................................................................................13

Race and Gender: Passing in Octavia Butler’s Parables ..................................................17

Culture and History, Race and Racial Identity ...............................................................21

Gender and Gender Identity, Performance and Passing .................................................28

Conclusion: The Intersection of Race and Gender ............................................................48

Works Cited .......................................................................................................................52

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 I. INTRODUCTION: PASSING AND PERFORMANCE

Science fiction and dystopian literature have often served as vehicles for authors

to consider the past and express their hopes and fears for the future. This preoccupation

with the past and its possible future outcomes is evident in the writings of author Octavia

Butler. Butler’s Parable novels utilize themes such as racism, slavery, classism, and war

to take a critical look at the outcomes of historical events and their impact on the future

of U.S. society, ultimately providing meaningful social commentary on gender, gender

roles, gendered performance, and gender passing that can best be understood in

conjunction with gender theory.

In an article for The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky explains the shortcomings in the

way that the science fiction genre has historically approached the issue of race, stating

that too often authors rely on metaphor or tokenism, rather than diversity or a direct

approach. Berlatsky champions the direct approach “in which racial issues in a sci-fi

setting are dealt with as if they are continuous with, or affected by, racial issues in the

present and the past” and names only two science fiction authors that have successfully

approached the issue of race—one of whom is Octavia Butler. Butler accomplishes this

with a main character whose race “inflects her relationships” while suggesting that “even

after the apocalypse,” “race and racism aren’t that easy to escape.” The science fiction

genre typically hides behind all of its futuristic technology, space and time travel, and

1
other imaginative concepts, dealing with racism indirectly1. Ultimately, Butler is able to

overcome this frequent avoidance of race, and instead explores its impact on our past,

present, and future while utilizing it as a lens through which to describe dynamic and

diverse female protagonists who defy the patriarchal expectations of their assigned

genders.

Octavia Butler’s widely acclaimed novels, Parable of the Sower (1993) and

Parable of the Talents (1998) are overtly feminist in nature and speak directly to Butler’s

understanding of America’s racially divided past and her concerns for its future. Butler

draws upon her own history, as well as the history of millions of African American

slaves, by frequently alluding to slavery in antebellum America. Relying on recognizable

themes, such as the journey North towards freedom, Butler draws strong parallels

between the role race played in the survival of the escaped slaves of America’s past and

the role these themes play in the survival of the protagonist of Butler’s apocalyptic future,

Lauren Oya Olamina.

Through her frequent historical references, Butler lays the groundwork for

Lauren’s own northward journey. Lauren, like her ancestors, is threatened not only by

the color of her skin, but by her gender. She relies on her androgynous appearance and

untraditional education to pass as male in order to secure the safety and privilege she

would not have access to as a female when she heads North following the destruction of

her community in an apocalyptic society. However, it is not only gender which factors

1
While science fiction has undoubtedly struggled to accurately represent race, recent literary criticism by
Isaiah Lavender III, Ingrid Thalen, Marleen S. Barr, and DeWitt Douglas Kilgore has explored a more
nuanced, complex relationship between sci-fi and race.
2
into her survival; race remains a central and equally important role and the two frequently

intersect throughout the novels.

Through an extensive series of actions, Lauren passes between genders within the

novels, adopting the characteristics and duties associated with stereotypical masculinity

or femininity. Her ability to easily perform these actions implies that gender is merely a

learned, outward performance rather than an inherent set of genetic codes and has no

basis in biology. By embracing the idea of gender passing, Octavia Butler’s Parable of

the Sower and Parable of the Talents portray gender as an ambiguous and amorphous

human characteristic and suggest that the gender binary is an outdated social construction

with little relevance in a modern society. While passing has traditionally been defined as

“the movement of a person who is legally or socially designated black into a white racial

category or white social identity” (Davis vii), Lauren does what I refer to as gender

passing, appearing as a member of a different gender rather than as a member of a

different race.

Passing: An Overview

Octavia Butler’s Parable novels rely heavily upon historically significant themes,

including slavery, class, socio-economic status, and race roles. The inclusion of these

primarily serve as a warning; Butler shows how history’s habit of repeating itself has led

to America’s apocalyptic future. The primary way in which Butler examines and

magnifies history is through gender passing, which is highly evocative of the racial

passing common during Jim Crow America, in which individuals were able to pass into a

society that privileged whites over blacks because of their ambiguous and easily masked

physical features. While many critics read Lauren’s stereotypically masculine qualities

3
as a form of androgyny or label her as a “tom boy2,” I argue that she inhabits a male

gendered persona while remaining biologically female, constituting a gendered

performance and passing as male throughout the novels.

Historically, identifying the earliest examples of racial passing is nearly

impossible, though as Werner Sollors explains, “camouflaging of aspects of one’s

identity is probably a human universal” that has been taking place for many hundreds, if

not thousands, of years. However, recognized instances of passing, primarily in the form

of racial passing are “particularly a phenomenon of the nineteenth and the first half of the

twentieth century” (247). These instances of racial passing rapidly found their way into

literature, appearing in slave narratives such as Ellen and William Craft’s Running a

Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), in which Ellen Craft describes her racial, gender

and disability passing, and in writings of the Harlem Renaissance including Nella

Larsen’s Passing (1929). Today, similar themes continue to permeate literature,

appearing in novels by authors like Louise Erdich, Danzy Senna, and Paul Beatty as well

as Butler’s Parable novels.

For many, the act of passing served as a means to access the freedom, safety, and

privilege that passers would not otherwise have access to. This is described in Juda

Bennett’s The Passing Figure: Racial Confusion in Modern American Literature, which

provides a helpful look at the historical phenomenon of passing, specifically in relation to

racial passing in the United States. Bennett explains that “‘passing’ is an inelegant term

that most probably comes from the ‘pass’ given to slaves so that they might travel

without being taken for runaways” (36). However, for very light-skinned blacks,

2
Critics, discussed later, include Melzer, Levy, and Agusti.
4
mistaken racial identity served as a pass which “did not only help some light-skinned

blacks pass into free states but would allow for other escapes into freedom during the

Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras” (2). Similarly, Lauren’s gender identity is easily

mistaken and, although Lauren never engages in acts of racial passing, she passes in order

to obtain the same benefits as a racial passer; as a young woman travelling alone in

dangerous territory, Lauren passes as male to avoid the acts of violence that she might be

subject to as a female.

In this thesis, passing is defined as a legitimate means of ensuring survival,

moving passing out of the realm of being a convenient way to change identity and avail

oneself of certain privileges, as Larsen sometimes presents it. Many critics have offered

definitions of passing, ranging from those specific to racial passing in which passing is

“specifically defined as that phenomenon of light-skinned blacks allowing and even

encouraging people to mistake them for white” (Bennett 36), to more generalized

definitions in which “passing is the intentional presenting of oneself to the world in a

manner that conflicts with how the individual in question views himself or herself”

(Hostert 12). Kristen Schilt offers a more precise definition, stating:

The term passing signifies the actions of an individual who lives temporarily or

full-time in an identity to which he or she is seen as not having an authentic or

legitimate claim….people may pass to gain rights and benefits they would

otherwise not be able to access….While passing can be unintentional, it typically

implies strategic intent to take on a new identity. (Schilt)

This inclusive definition is essential to understanding the phenomenon of passing on a

larger scale. Schilt explains that passing can be full-time or temporary, the reasons

5
people may pass, and that passing can be both intentional and unintentional, while

ultimately recognizing passing as strategic means to ensure survival, just as it is for

Lauren.

While passing is primarily thought of as a tool to mask race, passing can serve as

a tool to mask many other identifying characteristics such as gender, class, ethnicity,

religion or sexuality, as is the case in the Parable novels. In her introduction to the 1997

Penguin Classics version of Larsen’s Passing, Thadious M. Davis offers an insightful

analysis of the act of passing within U.S. society. Davis’ definition includes gender

passing, writing “‘to pass’ has come into common usage as a general descriptive verb

indicative of masking or disguising any aspect of identity such as class, ethnicity, religion

or sexuality, implying as well as unmasking or exposing of one viable construction of a

cultural identity” (xxx). As Davis explains, passing can take many forms.

For many, passing was often a simultaneously straightforward yet dangerous and

necessary option, one of only very few, that could lead to freedom. Nella Larsen’s

Passing features characters who utilize their ability to pass as white in order to take

advantage of the privilege associated with whiteness, just as Lauren takes advantage of

the privilege associated with masculinity in Butler’s Parable novels. Davis suggests that

Larsen presents passing to her reader as a “practical, emancipatory option” and a “simple

but ‘hazardous business’” (ix). She goes on to say that “reasons for passing” are almost

always “tied to survival and economic pressures” (xviii) in an effort to obtain “both basic

human and fundamental constitutional rights enjoyed by the….majority” (ix). Thus,

passing afforded individuals more than just freedom, survival, or a new identity, but the

rights that they had previously been stripped of.

6
 Lauren is nothing if not a symbol of change. She never cowers from the

challenges that present themselves to her and is willing to take on an entirely different

identity in order to survive. As a teenager, Lauren emblematizes the idea that gender is

fluid and non-binary, is almost always rooted in performance, and is able to be changed

at will. As a gender passer in the late 2020’s, Lauren pays an homage to the literary

racial passers, like Clare Kendry, more than 150 years her senior.

Like Lauren, Larsen’s Clare Kendry was orphaned as a teen and quickly learned

that the key, not only to her survival, but to her prosperity, was tied to her skin color. As

her grandfather was white, and she had two white aunts, Clare found that passing came

easily to her and consistently passed as white throughout her adulthood. Although Clare

engages in racial passing and Lauren engaged in gender passing, Lauren’s reasons for

changing her hair, clothing, and behavior in order to pass as male are identical to Clare’s;

her only chance for survival is to avail herself of the power and privilege associated with

the majority. By passing as male, Lauren is able to avoid the vulnerability of being

female in a society in which only the strong, or those who appear to be strong, survive.

Critics such as Anna C. Hostert and Julie Cary Nerad concur with Davis’

definition and discuss passing in relation to gender, sexuality, and class in their writings.

Just as a light-skinned black person might pass as white, a female might pass as male, a

gay or lesbian person might pass as straight, and a poor person might pass as rich in an

effort to “partake of the wider opportunities available to those in power” (Smith 43). I

will largely discuss passing in regards to gender, a topic that Schilt remarks has appeared

in novels in the form of “accounts of women who lived their lives as men in the 19th

century….These ‘passing women’ adopted masculine personas in historical periods in

7
which women had few rights and little mobility.” Likewise, while the Parable novels

take place in an uncertain future, it is a future shaped by historical periods of misogyny.

Its protagonist, Lauren, engages in gender passing in order to survive in societies that

favor males over females.

Performance Theory

The characters in Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents must

survive the unthinkable. As a young woman, practically alone in a dangerous world,

Lauren Olamina uses her quick-thinking to come up with a plan. She presents herself as

male to her fellow travelers in an effort to survive. For Lauren, the chances of survival

while acting or appearing as female are slim and would leave her open to sexual assault,

starvation, or even death. Therefore, gender passing becomes one of the few viable

options available to her; by appearing or acting as male, her chances for survival greatly

increase. However, in order to understand how these acts of gender passing are possible,

it is first necessary to understand that gender and the gender binary are, in the most basic

sense, not real. Gender consists of a falsely constructed set of characteristics which have

been ingrained in humans to continuously perform.

An understanding of passing is dependent on a thorough understanding of

performance in relation to both race and gender. As Giulia Fabi explains, not only is the

performative nature of these identities understood by critics, but by the passers

themselves: “the awareness that personal identities are constructed was the starting point

of the passer’s adventures, not the end result” (5). Thus, intentional passers utilized the

knowledge that, regardless of physical characteristics, racial identity could be performed

as desired.

8
 This idea, as explained by Fabi, holds true for gender passers: regardless of

biological sex (male/female), gender can be performed (masculine/feminine). By

creating characters that are able to “pass” as a member of a gender other than the one

with which they biologically identify, Butler presents strong social commentary on the

prescriptive nature of gender in contemporary society, suggesting that gender is merely a

performance and has no basis in biology. When human beings are born, they are

classified as either male or female as determined by their internal genetic codes and

primary sex characteristics. This information is often used to determine both their sex

and gender. According to Juliana Makuchi and Nfah-Abbenyi, sex is defined as “a

person’s biological maleness or femaleness” while gender refers to “the nonphysiological

aspects of sex, a group of attributes and/or behaviours, shaped by society and culture, that

are defined as appropriate for the male sex or the female sex” (16). Parents begin to

inscribe gender into their children shortly after they are born; by providing boys with

trucks and dressing them in blue while giving girls dolls and dressing them in pink,

parents send strong signals regarding what constitutes appropriate gendered behavior

according to society’s standards. Children, in turn, learn to conform to the gender

characteristics associated with their respective sexes as a means to gain acceptance from

society at large.

Because it is not present at birth but is rather a learned set of behaviors, gender is

able to be altered, turned on or off, intensified, or weakened as needed. This fact

suggests that gender is “less an essential characteristic of the individual than it is a series

of performative gestures that the individual learns to replicate” (Hollinger 207). In her

seminal 1990 text, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler proposes her theory of gender

9
performativity in which gender characteristics other than those typically associated with a

person’s biological sex can be performed; people that biologically identify as female

perform masculine gender characteristics and vice versa. Essential to this theory is the

idea of repetition expressed by Veronica Hollinger in her article “(Re)reading Queerly:

Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender” in which she states that

“in individual performances, the subject reiterates social ideals of gender behavior, and it

is these re-citations, these active repetitions of previously existent models, that are

constitutive of the individual as a gendered subject” (207). When the outward signs of

gender are repeated, they become sign and signifier of the already established societal

definitions of gender. This repetition is what constitutes a gendered performance. I

argue that this is the case for Lauren Olamina in Octavia Butler’s Parable novels. Lauren

was presumably determined to be a female at birth due to her genetic make-up and

external sexual characteristics and was raised by her parents as female and self-identifies

as female. However, she repeatedly and convincingly takes on male identities throughout

the novels, which I read as constituting a masculine gender performance.

Gender passing is only possible because gender is able to be performed. Judith

Butler explains that the display of outward gender characteristics presents an illusion in

which a person’s sex appears to align with their perceived gender identity, asking her

reader to “consider gender….as a corporeal style, an ‘act,’ as it were, which is both

intentional and performative, where ‘performative’ suggests a dramatic and contingent

construction of meaning” (177). She believes that a person’s “words, acts, gestures, and

desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface

of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the

10
organizing principle of identity as cause” (177). Therefore, the display of outward

gender characteristics can often be an illusion in which a person’s sex appears to, but may

not actually, align with their perceived gender identity. Further, Judith Butler writes,

“such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that

the essence or identity they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured

and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (179). Through this

extensive definition of gender performance, Judith Butler explains that the display of

outward gender characteristics can often be an illusion in which a person’s sex appears to

align with their perceived gender identity, but because this is not necessarily the case, and

because the outward signs of gender actually have nothing to do with a person’s sex, their

actions constitute a performance.

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler uses drag queens to demonstrate the concept of

gender performance. I refer to Butler’s illustrative example and other actions similar to it

as “gender passing.” The passer is able to effectively conceal the intentional

misalignment of their sex and gender through a repetitive performance, utilizing the body

as a prop or tool to display gender rather than allowing the body to be the determiner of

gender. In the Parables, Lauren’s body often determines her behavior due to her

disability, hyperempathy syndrome; by performing masculinity and passing as male,

Lauren has, in many ways, regained control of her body by determining how she wishes

to present it to the outside world. Gender passing enables Lauren to not only survive, but

to be empowered.

Further, while critics have discussed the obvious gendered themes in Butler’s

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, they have failed to give a

11
comprehensive overview of the implications of the interaction of race and gender in the

novels. Authors such as Clara E. Agusti, who discusses gender in relation to the sexual

exploitation of black women, never goes so far as to recognize Lauren as a passer, and

Patricia Melzer and Michael Levy, who write about cross-dressing and androgyny, fall

short of even recognizing that race plays a role in Lauren’s understanding and

performance of gender. Likewise, authors such as Raffaella Baccolini go to great lengths

to discuss the growing role of women in science fiction novels, but often fail to recognize

the role that women of color play in science fiction novels. In addition, literature on

passing such as that offered by Werner Sollors and Juda Bennett, maintains a singular

focus that only recognizes racial passing and does not mention other forms of passing,

such as gender or sexuality, or glosses over these briefly. Finally, literature on gender

and gender performance, such as that by Veronica Hollinger and Judith Butler, often do

not give voice to the gendered issues facing black women. Ultimately, despite the

longstanding role of passing in literature, issues of passing and gender have not been

comprehensively discussed. In my upcoming chapters, I will build upon current criticism

by adding to the ongoing conversation on both passing and gender performance, paying

particular attention to their interaction and the importance of viewing them as

intersectional. In addition, while critics like Melzer and Levy have discussed Butler’s

Parable novels in relation to gender, I will go further to prove that Lauren is more than

just an “androgynous tom boy,” but is actually passing as a member of the opposite

gender.

12
Intersectionality

Octavia Butler’s Parable novels, while ultimately a mechanism to provide

commentary on race and gender in America, essentially serve as the coming-of-age story

of Lauren Oya Olamina. Lauren continuously discards elements of her identity in

exchange for new characteristics that enable her to evolve and survive. She eventually

becomes the “Shaper” of a progressive, wealthy, successful, and wide-reaching religion,

Earthseed, acting as a quasi-totalitarian demigod. Just prior to her death, Lauren sees her

childhood vision come to fruition when Earthseed sends its followers into space to live

aboard a starship (Talents 445).

Butler has a strong, if not subtle, reason for characterizing Lauren as a gender

passer. She inextricably links her with her racial and literary ancestors, with slaves and

racial passers, to make clear that Lauren is not just another “tom boy” and to assert her

message that the way that race and gender are viewed in society must evolve. Butler,

who consistently identifies herself in interviews as a black feminist, shows the many

influences of her contemporaries in her writing. The majority of Butler’s writing was

done at the height of the third-wave of feminism, which attempts to challenge middle-

class white feminism to be more inclusive of marginalized subgroups than the waves

before it. In 1989, just as Butler was writing the Parables, legal scholar and critical

theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw began writing about “how black women were often

marginalized by both feminist and anti-racist movements because their concerns did not

fit comfortably within either group,” and coined the term intersectionality (Emba). For

Crenshaw, intersectionality was all about the interaction of oppressing factors, such as

gender and race and has today been expanded to include a number of defining factors

13
including religion, sexual orientation, class, and more. Crenshaw argues that the “focus

on the most privileged group members [white feminists] marginalizes those who are

multiply-burdened” and “creates a distorted analysis of racism and sexism” (Crenshaw

140). She goes on to say that black women can’t be thought about using a “single axis

framework,” meaning that the multiple categories to which they belong must be

considered in tandem, that black women are often excluded from feminist theory and

antiracist politics, and that the entire framework must be rethought (140).

While Crenshaw was working to address society’s failure to recognize the

oppression of marginalized groups, Butler was simultaneously writing about these same

themes. Using her literary voice to create works of fiction centered around characters

representing these oppressed peoples, Butler was writing about intersectionality. Butler,

a black female who struggled in school due to dyslexia, grew up too poor to afford to

purchase books of her own, and quietly identified as a lesbian (Cowen), would certainly

qualify as what Crenshaw calls “multiply-burdened.” Butler was marginalized in school

as a child and, later, in literary circles as a black female science fiction writer. These

circumstances are reflected in all Butler’s writings with many of her protagonists,

including Lauren, experiencing these same or similar oppressions.

Lauren’s multiple oppressions, being black, female, poor, and disabled, serve as

an example of why we need intersectionality. As a black female, Lauren’s identifying

characteristics are working against her; in her society, there is no place for a black

woman except to be abused, kidnapped, raped, tortured, or murdered. Just as Crenshaw

does, Butler understands that Lauren cannot survive in a world where she is invisible and

silenced. By alluding to slavery and racial passing and employing this rich history to

14
inform Lauren’s characterization as a gender passer, Butler allows the doubly burdened

Lauren to be visible, to survive, and to prosper. As a black woman passing as a black

male, Lauren serves a largely allegorical role in the novel, allowing Butler to provide

significant commentary on the need for intersectionality in feminism and society’s

erasure of black women and other marginalized groups. If Lauren must pass as male in

order to survive, then what hope is there for black women?

In the following chapter, I provide an overview of Octavia Butler’s contributions

to the science fiction community, including how she assisted the genre in progressing

beyond its oversexualization of women and its singular white male perspective. I explain

how Butler draws from and pays homage to African and African American history, using

her writing to demonstrate that slavery and racism continue and will continue to impact

both society and literature. Further, I follow the African roots of Butler’s protagonist and

draw on prominent African mythology and literary criticism to show that it is Lauren’s

heritage that informs my reading of her ability to successfully inhabit two gendered

spaces. I explore both gender and gender roles within the Parable novels, explaining

how Lauren exposes gender as performance rather than as biological and uses this

knowledge to successfully pass as male to ensure her own safety, security, and survival in

the midst of an apocalypse. Ultimately, Butler’s Parable novels demonstrate that race

and gender cannot exist in a vacuum; in order to successfully begin to comprehend

Lauren’s plight, these two factors must be looked at as overlapping and interactive.

While Lauren is born biologically female, she instinctively inhabits a male space,

adopting masculine hair, clothing, and mannerisms, in order to survive. Through a series

of exclusions and comparisons, I argue that Lauren is a gender passer; she is not a “tom

15
boy,” a cross-dresser, or simply an androgynous female. Lauren passes as male in order

to avail herself of the privileges associated with the more dominant group, just as light-

skinned blacks did to escape slavery in antebellum America. This argument is further

reinforced by Lauren’s racial and cultural heritage, as well as historical references to

slavery, within the novels.

16
 II. RACE AND GENDER: PASSING IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S PARABLES

Race is a theme that presents itself as primary throughout Butler’s work, evoking

not only her personal history, but African American history as a whole. This assertion is

echoed by Marlene Allen, who writes that “Butler insistently incorporates a readily

identifiable African American history in her writings even in those texts that are set in the

future or on other planets, using the creative possibilities of science fiction to portray

African American history in new and highly original ways” (1354). Frequently, Butler’s

inclusion of African American history appears to readers as a warning about the dangers

of history repeating itself, or as Allen refers to it in the title of her essay, the

“‘Boomerang’ of African American History,” in which the “pains of racism…of the past

are ever-present and continue to affect the psyche of African Americans today” (1354).

Allen explains that Butler includes racism, slavery, and African American history in her

writing to not only provide commentary on the shameful actions of America’s recent

past, but to process and bring light to the myriad shameful actions that have plagued

humans for hundreds of thousands of years. While she may be writing on a micro level,

exploring the impact of slavery and racism on a handful of characters in her novels, it is

clear that Butler writes to honor the experiences of her ancestors and encourage

meaningful examination and change on a macro level. For Butler, race and racial

inequalities continue to be an issue well into America’s future.

Although characterized as a science-fiction writer by genre, many of Octavia

Butler’s novels and short stories reveal the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity and

17
class while weaving these themes into her future and other-worldly fiction. As stated in a

1986 interview with Frances M. Beal for The Black Scholar, the freedom the genre

allows in incorporating such themes is initially what drew Butler in; however, science-

fiction was initially limited to white male writers and characters. Beal writes that “in the

past, there were editors who didn’t really think that sex or women should be mentioned.

Blacks were not mentioned…Sex was kept out” (14). Despite the racial and gender

restraints she first encountered, Butler’s personal experiences seem to have made any

limitation in her writing impossible. In a 1991 interview with Randall Kenan for the

publication Callaloo, Butler explains that her

mother did domestic work and I was around sometimes when people talked about

her as if she were not there and I got to watch her going in back doors and

generally being treated in a way that made me…I spent a lot of my childhood

being ashamed of what she did, and I think one of the reasons I wrote […] was to

resolve my feelings, because after all, I ate because of what she did. (496)

Butler goes on to say that her “mother was born in 1914 and spent her early childhood on

a sugar plantation in Louisiana,” stating that “it wasn’t that far removed from slavery, the

only difference was that they could leave” (496). Butler explains that it was these early

memories and experiences of being “different” or “less than” that created the parallels

between her life and her writing, ensuring that these important themes permeated her

storytelling. As Sandra Govan explains, “[Butler] put race and gender, persistence and

power in all her stories” (“Sometimes I Sit Here” 12). As a storyteller, Butler would

ultimately use her personal experiences to fuel her writing, often helping to memorialize

an important history and inspire social change.

18
 Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents follow Lauren,

as she experiences a coming of age. After Robledo, California, the community she was

raised in, is destroyed and her family is killed, Lauren does whatever is necessary to

survive on the streets, ultimately travelling northward in search of a better life for herself

and the fellow travelers she meets on her journey. The early portions of Parable of the

Sower, which take place between the years 2024 and 2027, mainly focus on the journals

of a teenage girl who is kept isolated from the rapidly declining conditions outside her

walled community. By mid-2027, just after Lauren’s 18th birthday, she is suddenly thrust

into the harsh reality of the outside world. Lauren immediately becomes a homeless

wanderer and describes her encounters with unimaginable violence and poverty while

searching for refuge in the midst of chaos.

Lauren lives in a society that, despite being far into the future at the time of the

novels’ publication and displaying advances in areas such as technology and space travel,

clearly continues to subscribe to patriarchal gender roles. Lauren’s America maintains

traditional men’s and women’s restrooms (Sower 13), characterizes emotionally burdened

women as crazy (Sower 21), and depicts women as caretakers who cook and care for the

children while men serve as protectors (Sower 80-1). Lauren later writes that it has

become a society in which “repression of women has become more and more extreme. A

woman who expresses her opinions, ‘nags,’ disobeys her husband, or otherwise ‘tramples

her womanhood’ and ‘acts like a man,’ might have her head shaved, her forehead

branded, her tongue cut out, or, worst case, she might be stoned to death or burned”

(Talents 55). In addition to the patriarchal gender roles to which they subscribe, Lauren’s

society also maintains antiquated racial prejudices and, immediately upon becoming

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homeless, it is clear that race will play a large role in, and possibly hinder, Lauren’s

safety and survival. One of these travelers, Zahra, explains that on the road, “‘mixed

couples catch hell’” (Sower 157), cluing the reader further in to the depths that Butler’s

2027 America has sunk. One of the major ways in which race appears in Butler’s

Parable novels is through examples of modern day slavery. As Jane Donawerth

explains, “the slave narrative is often a model for 1990s dystopias,” a category which

Butler’s novels certainly fall into (49). As the novels progress, this connection becomes

increasingly apparent as direct commentary on race relations is replaced by both literal

and figurative references to and examples of the slavery which America was built upon

and which has, in Butler’s Parable novels, again become commonplace.

Octavia Butler’s Parable novels foreground the interaction of race and gender as

they relate to Lauren’s identity as a gender passer. In the remainder of this chapter, I will

argue that Butler’s repeated references to slavery in America, as well as Lauren’s African

heritage, indicate that she should be read as a trickster figure whose ability to transform

herself and manipulate others contributes to her status as a gender passer. In addition, I

argue that Lauren’s physical and identifying characteristics, such as her name, clothing,

hair, and body shape and size reinforce her status as a gender passer as opposed to an

individual who is crossdressing or androgynous. I maintain that Lauren’s upbringing, as

dictated by her family and community, further contributes to this reading as their

untraditional society foregoes patriarchal gender roles in exchange for an education in

survival that transcends genders. Further, I argue that Lauren engages in other forms of

passing, such as religious passing and disability passing. Lauren hides her hyperempathy

syndrome and passes as a healthy, or non-disabled, individual in order to ensure her

20
survival, just as she hides her femininity and passes as male. Finally, I argue that Lauren

sustains her status as a gender passer and trickster throughout both Parable of the Sower

and Parable of the Talents. In Talents, Lauren eventually surpasses the need to pass as a

basic condition of her survival; instead, her passing becomes both an asset and a liability

as a religious leader and mother.

Culture and History, Race and Racial Identity

Throughout the Parable novels, Octavia Butler makes strong connections

between her fictional, future United States and the rich history of America’s past.

Because of this connection, and the prevalence of both literal and figurative slavery in the

Parable novels, I argue that, as the embodiment of the broader surviving elements of

African and Pan-African cultures, Lauren also embodies a common trickster figure in

African mythology, Esu-Elegbara, which Henry Louis Gates describes in the first chapter

of The Signifying Monkey as the “divine trickster figure of Yoruba mythology” who

repeatedly appears throughout the “black oral narrative tradition” (5).

Esu-Elegbara has many traits which contribute to his status as trickster, among

which Gates describes his individuality, indeterminacy, sexuality, and uncertainty (6).

Like Esu, I argue that Lauren’s primary trickster characteristic, her inhabitance of two

gendered spaces, is actually a form of gender passing. The trickster Esu, like Lauren, “is

… of dual gender,” simultaneously inhabiting two gendered spaces, the male and female

(Gates 29). Although Esu has a “remarkable penis,” Gates argues, he is equally female in

many ways. As explained earlier, Judith Butler argues that gender is determined not by

the body’s biological nature, but by an intentional external performance. Therefore,

Esu’s physical characteristics do not inhibit his ability to be of dual gender; while

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Lauren’s biological femaleness, like Esu’s penis, is always present, her status as a

trickster figure reinforces her ability to pass as male.

Lauren’s primary likeness to the trickster Esu is her inhabitance of two gendered

spaces. While Lauren was presumably determined to be a female at birth due to her

genetic make-up and external sexual characteristics and was raised by her parents as a

female and self-identifies as female, she repeatedly and convincingly takes on a male

identity throughout the novels. In addition to Lauren’s literal appearance as male, Lauren

figuratively inhabits a male space through her actions and ideas. This figurative

inhabitance continues throughout Parable of the Talents.

Lauren’s embodiment of Esu is highly important as gender roles play a large part

in African identity and often do not align with those found in traditional patriarchal

society. As described by Diane Lewis in a research study on black sex roles and

behavioral traits, women in West African societies are “expected to be independent and

self-sufficient when they marry. For example, among groups such as the Yoruba, women

are expected to be self-confident and competent and it is rare for a woman to be

dependent economically on her husband. A dependent woman, it is said, is treated with

contempt” (234). Lauren’s status as a strong, independent woman then corresponds with

the responsibility bestowed upon her as a result of her Yoruba surname. However, this

strength and independence, in conjunction with her physical appearance, often borders on

presenting as masculine in an American context, particularly within the community in

which Lauren lives that embraces patriarchal gender roles such as men being unemotional

protectors and women being overly emotional mothers and homemakers.

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 Many of the characteristics Lauren displays throughout the Parable novels

highlight her trickster tendencies. Early in Parable of the Talents, Lauren’s daughter,

Larkin, exposes her mother’s trickster characteristics, stating “the words are harmless, I

suppose, and metaphorically true. At least she began with some species of truth” (3).

Lauren is often deceitful throughout the novel and seems to operate with ulterior motives.

This is, at times, sensed by those around her. Govan explains, Lauren “can be clinically

realistic, even manipulative at times” (“The Parable”). Lauren utilizes her education and

convincing rhetoric to convert many followers to her Earthseed religion. She

systematically excludes those who question her system of beliefs by allowing them to

stay in Acorn, the community she and her followers have built, but stripping them of

democratic rights by not allowing them to be part of the “‘decision-making’” process and

garnishing their pay until they accept Earthseed as their religion (Talents 81). In Parable

of the Sower, Lauren’s Earthseed, the religion and community she has created based upon

her inability to identify with the institutional religion of her parents, also upholds Esu’s

trickster status. Lauren bases the religion upon the idea that “God Is Change” and spends

countless hours writing the first version of “Earthseed: Books of the Living” (3).

Earthseed serves as a diversion for Lauren, distracting her from the reality of the outside

world and the events of her household. She asserts that the “destiny of Earthseed is to

take root among the stars,” believing that Earthseed communities should exist on earth as

well as in space (Sower 71), just as Esu keeps one leg “anchored in the realm of the gods

while the other rests in this, our human world” (Gates 6). As Govan explains, “Butler

shows Earthseed even adopting (adapting?) classic tropes from African-American culture

– masking and signifyin,’ – by placing an African derived ‘folk’ belief system in the

23
same privileged space as the ‘major’ world religions” (“The Parable of the Sower as

Rendered by Octavia Butler”). However, it is more than Lauren’s religious beliefs that

contribute to her status as trickster.

Lauren’s status as trickster is also highlighted by references to slavery, passing,

and her African heritage throughout the Parable novels. Like Ellen Craft, a light-skinned

slave in the Confederate South who attempted to pass as white in order to safely travel to

the Union North, Lauren passes as male to obtain the safety and security that whiteness

and masculinity often guarantee in a society where it is considered “inconvenient and

dangerous to be on the street as a homeless woman” (Talents 418). Butler first introduces

the concept of passing in reference to race, just prior to introducing Lauren’s desire to

pass as male. Upon realizing the risk of travelling in a multi-racial group, Lauren states:

“‘We can be a black couple and their white friend. If Harry can get a reasonable tan,

maybe we can claim him as a cousin’” (Sower 157). While the passing Lauren proposes

is opposite of the generally understood black to white passing and is, instead, white to

black, Butler is still providing commentary on the fluidity and performative nature of

race3. Daniel Sharfstein, writer for the New York Times Magazine, explains that these

acts of “‘reverse passing’” have been going on for hundreds of years, while Alisha

Gaines, professor at Florida State University, argues that whites pass for black in order to

gain empathy (qtd. in Eversley). Regardless of their reasons, the same concepts of

fluidity and performativity that are revealed by both racial passing and reverse racial

passing can easily be applied to gender. This understanding of the constructed and

3
Examples of members of other races passing as black have gained publicity in recent years; in 2015 we
were introduced to Rachel Dolezal, who infamously passed as black and served as President of the
Spokane, Washington chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. (Sharfstein), and Vijay Chokal-Ingam, brother of actress
Mindy Kaling, who revealed he passed as black to gain admittance into medical school (Pearson).
24
performative nature of identity, along with Butler’s conscious exploration of “the impact

of race and sex upon future society” is critical to Lauren’s gender passing (Foster 37).

The first signs of slavery Butler writes of are reminiscent of the system of

sharecropping used in the United States as a response to the abolition of slavery. The

nation’s new President, Christopher Charles Morpeth Donner, advocates for a system in

which laws would be changed to allow for the suspension of “‘overly restrictive’

minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws” in exchange for employers

providing “adequate room and board” for homeless employees (Sower 25-6). Many of

Lauren’s friends and neighbors are considering moving to communities that would strip

them of their freedoms in exchange for safety and employment, resembling old company-

towns. As Lauren explains, “anyone KSF hired would have a hard time living on the

salary offered. In not very much time, I think the new hires would be in debt to the

company. That’s an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and

work them harder. Debt slavery” (Sower 111). Later, we learn that “such debt slaves

could be forced to work longer hours for less pay, could be ‘disciplined’ if they failed to

meet their quotas, could be traded and sold with or without their consent, with or without

their families” (Sower 264). Other references to race that appear early in the novel,

include figurative and symbolic language, such as when Lauren declares “I’m going

north” (Sower 114). Lauren is one of thousands of travelers headed north in search of

readily available resources and employment. This journey northward is highly symbolic

of the journey many escaped and freed slaves made from the Confederate South to the

Union North in search of a better life. In a more direct reference, when her neighborhood

mourns the loss of Lauren’s father as well as the rapid decline of her community, they

25
collectively sing “We shall not, we shall not be moved….,” a spiritual folk song thought

to date back to the slave era (Sower 125). Finally, when considering fleeing her

community prior to its destruction, Lauren states, “I wonder if there are people outside

who will pay me to teach them reading and writing—basic stuff—or people who will pay

me to read and write for them” (Sower 114). In Butler’s America, traditional education

has become too unsafe, too difficult, or too expensive to obtain. Likewise, education,

specifically in the form of reading and writing, was forbidden to slaves as a method of

keeping them from gaining power.

As Butler’s Parable novels continue, it becomes clear that Lauren’s journals echo

the themes and content of many slave narratives, revealing more frightening and direct

forms of slavery, as supported by Sandra Govan:

I think it is entirely possible to treat Sower as another in a growing list of neo-

slave narratives. Indeed, the parallels are quite striking. As a body of texts, slave

narratives utilized the first-person voice; one person records both his/her personal

history, his/her reflections on the horrific conditions of slavery, and the larger

history of other enslaved people in the immediate community or those

encompassed by the system in a given region. Lauren’s journal entries certainly

take up this task. (“The Parable of the Sower as Rendered by Octavia Butler”)

In addition to debt slavery and figurative allusions to slavery in American history, Lauren

encounters and writes about sexual slavery taking place in the society in which she lives.

After her community is destroyed, Lauren manages to find two former neighbors, Harry

and Zahra, with whom she travels while accumulating many other new friends, several of

whom have been held as slaves at some point throughout their lives. The group begins to

26
refer to themselves as the “‘crew of the modern underground railroad’” (Sower 268).

Lauren’s journal explains that Zahra’s husband had “bought her from her homeless

mother when she was only fifteen” (Sower 154), later remarking that she “had been

waiting to ask [Zahra] how much a person costs these days" (Sower 170). As Clara

Agusti explains, “sexual slavery and prostitution are inherent tendencies of a system that

favors profit at the expense of human well-being. Lauren Olamina, the female

protagonist, slowly unfolds in her diary how society allows for the sexual exploitation of,

particularly, black women” (351-2). Through examples Lauren shares, it is clear that

slavery in Butler’s America is alive and well, creating a climate in which individuals will

go to great lengths to ensure their own survival.

Not only does Butler tie her characters to American and African American history

with her frequent allusions to slavery, but she ties them to African history. As Gates

explains, black Africans who survived the Middle Passage on their way from Africa to

the New World carried “aspects of their cultures that were meaningful, that could not be

obliterated, and that they chose, by acts of will, not to forget.” One example occurs later

in Parable of the Sower, when Butler reveals small details about Bankole, Lauren’s new

husband’s, appearance, explaining that he looks “more than a little like an old picture

[Lauren] used to have of Fredrick Douglass” (Sower 298), along with information about

his name and family history. When Lauren meets Bankole while travelling north, they

immediately forge a connection over the root of their last names:

I talked to him, introduced myself and learned that his name was Bankole—

Taylor Franklin Bankole. Our last names were an instant bond between us.

We’re both descended from men who assumed African surnames back during the

27
 1960s. His father and my grandfather had had their names legally changed, and

both had chosen Yoruba replacement names. (Sower 211)

Both last names provide a foundation for cultural and historical symbolism throughout

Butler’s Parable novels, giving readers insight into Lauren’s strong connection with her

culture, ancestors and family history.

Gender and Gender Identity, Performance and Passing

Octavia Butler’s novels display equally strong themes related to gender and

gender identity as they do cultural, historical, and racial themes. Often, in her novels,

these themes all intersect, revealing the “dynamic interplay of race and sex in futuristic

worlds” and resulting in “strong female protagonists who shape the course of social

events” (Salvaggio 78). In fact, all of Butler’s novels feature female protagonists. As

science fiction has progressed from a male-dominated genre to one with an increasing

number of female writers, the portrayal of female characters in these novels has changed.

Female science fiction characters have slowly gone from being trivialized, dominated,

and sexualized to being strong, educated, and in control of their own destiny. This

change has challenged the patriarchal gender roles often seen in literature and created a

new breed of novels featuring female protagonists. According to Baccolini, this class of

new, female science fiction writers which first appeared during the 1990’s questioned

widely accepted ideas about gender identity and sexuality. Among these writers, Octavia

Butler utilizes her many strong, female characters to contribute to this dialogue.

Octavia Butler’s questioning of gender identity, gender roles and sexuality in

relation to race and racial identity is essential to the understanding of her Parable novels.

Butler shows the interaction of race and gender in many ways, beginning with the

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characters she employs in her novels. As Mehaffy and Keating explain, Butler introduces

“strong female protagonists, usually African American, and characters of many colors.

In this way, her work complicates traditional science fiction themes—global and local

power struggles, for example—by inflecting such struggles with the implications of

gender, ethnic, and class difference” (46). Often, Butler writes about women in

“nontraditional roles” who are “undeniably strong and independent” and are “usually

healers, teachers, artists, mothers” who explore “the impact of race and sex upon future

society” through their sometimes-subversive actions (Foster 37, 47-8). The protagonist

of Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Lauren Olamina, serves as a

particularly strong symbol of Butler’s desire to challenge both racial and patriarchal

tradition.

In Sandra Govan’s memorial to Octavia Butler, she writes that Butler “gave us

stories of strong capable women who were black and brown, tall and small, women who

were survivors, women who were smart, women who were thinkers and actors and

shapers; powerful women who followed her credo of change” (“Sometimes I Sit Here,

and I Wonder…” 12). Lauren Olamina serves as a perfect representative of the type of

characters Butler is known and respected for creating and continues to grow and change

throughout the Parable novels. In no way does she more firmly serve as a woman who

challenges “racial and sexual obstacles” (Salvaggio 78) than through inhabitance of two

gendered spaces, an action I defined earlier as gender passing.

Parable of Sower and Parable of the Talents offer complex and thought-

provoking commentary on the need for the interaction of gender and race in modern

society and the danger of not making progress. Race and gender often intersect within

29
the novels as they are the two single biggest factors working against Lauren’s survival.

Lauren utilizes her ability to pass in order to escape the “institutionalized rejection of

difference” described by Audre Lorde in her article “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women

Redefining Difference” (115). Lorde goes on to say that survival of those who pass can

only be ensured by “becoming familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor,

even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection” just as Lauren does in the

novel when she wears men’s clothing and assumes a masculine identity (114).

Additionally, in Not Just Race, Not Just Gender, Valerie Smith notes that passing

narratives can be “productive sites for considering how the intersectionality of race, class,

and gender ideologies are constituted and denied” (60). This overlapping of social

categories is exemplified in Butler’s choice of name for her protagonist; before she even

begins passing, Lauren asserts her name is “androgynous, in pronunciation at least—

Lauren sounds like the more masculine Loren” (Sower 195). This foreshadowing

commentary demonstrates Lauren’s understanding of the complexities of the gender

binary and, ultimately, contributes to her later ability to transcend genders. Just as

Lauren’s last name, Olamina, serves as a symbol of her African heritage and ancestry,

Olamina becomes a common substitute for her first name amongst her friends and fellow

travelers in an effort to mask her true gender. Because one’s name often offers clues

regarding their identity, and because men refer to each other by last name more often than

women, it is highly symbolic of Lauren’s status as a trickster that her first and last names

have such rich gender and cultural significance.

While Lauren’s reasons for passing and the significance of her actions when

considered with her racial and cultural identity have been established, it is important to

30
understand how the concept of racial passing can be easily transferred to gender. Patricia

Melzer recognizes the role gender appearance plays in survival, stating “Lauren cross-

dresses as a man on her journey…This narrative device critically points out the social

constructions of gender roles in U.S. society, where being recognized as a woman can be

life threatening.” Lauren’s physical appearance aides her ability to pass in an increasingly

violent world where one’s gender can mean the difference between life and death. While

Melzer refers to Lauren’s altered appearance as simply “cross-dress[ing],” I argue that

this act has a much deeper significance. Not only does Lauren cross-dress, she changes

her hair, physical affect, and personality. Therefore, Lauren is not just cross-dressing, but

is actually performing masculinity and passing as male. Lauren is aided by what Michael

Levy, author of “Ophelia Triumphant: The Survival of Adolescent Girls in Recent Fiction

by Butler and Womack,” refers to as androgyny, which he believes is responsible for her

survival. He cites the book Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, stating that Pipher

“provides clues as to why some girls survive when so many others do not.” Levy believes

that “one of the keys is androgyny” which, according to Pipher, “helps girls to succeed in

life” because they have the ability to “act adaptively in any situation regardless of gender

role constraints.” Levy believes that Lauren’s androgyny is what ultimately enables her to

pass for male outside her community’s walls. In fact, Lauren herself proclaims her

androgyny, stating that she’s “big enough and androgynous-looking enough” to easily

pass as male (Talents 370). While Levy and Melzer both offer insightful analysis, their

discordant views display the complex psychology of gender. Lauren does cross-dress

and is physically androgynous, but she takes it one step further; it is these factors that

contribute to her ability to perform gender and pass as male.

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 Lauren’s physical appearance is the single largest factor contributing to her

survival; rather than simply calling this cross-dressing or androgyny, I maintain that

Lauren’s actions, such as cutting off her hair and donning men’s clothing, are a

performance that constitutes gender passing. Despite the differences in how they refer to

the act of altering her appearance, Levy and Melzer concur with Agusti who writes that

“in order to protect herself from rape and violence inflicted on women, in her escape to

the North Olamina decides she will dress as a man” (355). Agusti continues, “by doing

this, she does not surrender to the invisibility or vulnerability of her sex, but she

demonstrates her ability to understand gender not as essential, but as performative” (355).

For the purposes of this paper I will define cross-dressing as the act of intentionally and

temporarily altering one’s outward physical appearance to portray an alternative gender

and androgyny as intentionally or unintentionally displaying physical and psychological

characteristics of more than one gender simultaneously. However, it is because Lauren’s

gender performance is necessary for her survival that I argue that Lauren cross-dresses

and utilizes her self-proclaimed androgyny to actively and intentionally pass as male

rather than simply being an androgynous cross-dresser. While Lauren explains that her

appearance happens to be androgynous and she does choose to wear stereotypically male

clothing, to simply label her as such would diminish her struggle and experience. Lauren

is not just someone who happens to appear in a gender ambiguous manner and wear

men’s clothing because it looks cute or feels comfortable. Lauren is a young woman who

has experienced great loss and is actively in danger of being robbed, assaulted, or

murdered. Lauren cannot just kinda look the part; Lauren must pass as male, be

unquestionably male, in order to survive. Lauren angers upon being revealed, even

32
accidentally, as female by her fellow travelers and explains that looking like a female

isn’t going to help her “on the road” (Sower 195). As explained in a podcast on National

Public Radio featuring historian Allyson Hobbs, “passing was not a solitary act. It

required other people who were willing to keep your secret” (Bates). Lauren requires the

silent collaboration of her friends and fellow travelers in order to remain safe and pass

successfully.

My classification of Lauren’s actions as passing, rather than cross-dressing or

androgyny, are reinforced throughout Parable of the Sower. Well before Lauren is

forced out of her walled community, she expresses her desire to “go out posing as a

man,” revealing that through her masculine appearance, Lauren performs gender and

intentionally passes as male (Sower 127). Later, Zahra, one of the few surviving

members of Lauren’s former community, agrees to cut her hair for her. Zahra refers to

Lauren’s actions as “play[ing] man” (Sower 158). She misunderstands Lauren’s true

intentions, viewing her actions as a pleasurable joke or game, and suggests that Lauren

will simply be impersonating a man, rather than passing by intentionally adopting a new

gender identity for the duration of her journey. However, for Lauren, this is not a

frivolous teenage impulse; Lauren must “play man” in order to survive. Butler’s

suggestion that gender is able to be “played” supports the idea that it is not innate, but is

rather a performance. According to Judith Butler, “the effect of gender is produced

through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way

in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion

of an abiding gendered self” (179). Despite her female biology, Lauren’s nondescript

features, such as being “tall and strong” and her “man’s chest and hips,” make it easy for

33
her to physically disguise herself and perform masculinity by altering her speech and

behavior (Sower 195). This creates the illusion that the outward signs of gender she

displays correspond with her genetics, thus enabling her to pass as male. Additionally,

while Lauren’s physical appearance plays a large role in her ability to pass for male, I

argue that Lauren’s personal identity and background including her education,

interactions with friends and family, health and religious beliefs all contribute to her

ability to pass convincingly and effectively.

Another factor contributing to Lauren’s ability to pass as male is her community’s

system of beliefs that male and female children should all learn skills necessary for

survival; girls and boys are not separated and taught to behave according to the traditional

domestic and public sphere binary in which girls are taught to take care of the home and

boys are taught to go out into the world. For example, both male and female teenagers

are taught the use and care of guns and other weaponry and are taken for target practice.

Because of these skills that Lauren has learned, she is better able to perform masculinity

and pass as male. Lennell Dade and Lloyd Sloan, authors of “An Investigation of Sex-

Role Stereotypes in African Americans,” explain that, just like in Lauren’s multiracial

community, this binary is infrequently seen in African American households where

“behaviors that are seen as appropriate for one sex are seen as equally appropriate for the

other sex. Furthermore, behaviors that are seen as inappropriate for one sex are seen as

equally inappropriate for the other sex” more frequently among African Americans than

any other race (677). Lewis confirms this statement, explaining that “many of the

behaviors which whites see as appropriate to one sex or the other, blacks view as equally

appropriate to both sexes” (228). Dade and Sloan go on to paraphrase Marie Peters, who

34
feels that this is because appropriate behaviors among “children in the African American

community are separated more in terms of age and competency than in terms of sex”

(677) while Lewis states that “the black child…is not inculcated with standards which

polarize behavioral expectations according to sex” (228). Research shows that, because

black children are not separated and grouped by gender at the frequency with which

white children are, they are met with less stringent behavioral expectations and are

allowed to develop skills and characteristics that transcend patriarchal gender roles.

Among the traits that Lewis identifies as overlapping in males and females are

individualism, non-conformity, authority in the home, economic support of the family,

and independence in sexual behavior (229). Lauren’s entire multiracial community

functions similarly to the African American communities discussed by Dade and Sloan;

gender norms in Lauren’s community are highly fluid, which gives Lauren more

opportunity to learn skills and behavior that better prepare her to pass.

In addition to Lauren’s androgynous physical features, her actions, behaviors, and

upbringing strongly contribute to her ability to pass for male. Because of the ever-

increasing threat the outside world poses, parents must teach their children the practical

skills that will help them to survive. In addition to traditional schooling, students are

given lessons on how to use guns, despite the fact that this is traditionally seen as a

masculine activity. At the age of 15, Lauren begins going for regular target practice so

that she can effectively protect herself and her community, which she describes as a “rite

of passage” (Sower 38). This important skill serves Lauren well after she is forced

beyond the walls she has always known. Although her parents attempt to shield her from

the real world and provide her with the necessary practical skills needed for survival,

35
Lauren understands that her future is uncertain. She rejects the feminine ideals of

“tak[ing] care of babies and cook[ing]” and chastises women who choose this

conventional lifestyle, realizing that these won’t help her in the long run (Sower 50).

Once Lauren is thrown into the outside world, she is forced to rely on her survival skills.

Lauren’s gun works to her advantage in more ways than one; by creating “the sight of [a]

bulge in [her] pocket”, Butler comments that Lauren’s possession of the gun acts largely

in the same way a penis would. While the physicality of the gun in her pocket may

contribute to Lauren’s masculine appearance, the act of simply being in possession of a

deadly weapon empowers and strengthens her, and gives her a significantly increased

chance of survival. Lauren’s gun acts as her physical and metaphoric phallus and

contributes to her ability to pass for male (Sower 143).

Another contributing factor to Lauren’s transcendence of the gender binary is her

hyperempathy syndrome, which is attributed to “Paracetco, the smart pill, the Einstein

powder, the particular drug my mother chose to abuse before my birth killed her” (Sower

11). Because of her mother’s drug use before her birth, Lauren is now an empath, or a

“sharer.” She experiences the physical sensations of other people upon seeing or hearing

them, regardless of whether they are feeling pain or pleasure. The concept of

hyperempathy that Butler writes about is presumably based upon the psychological idea

of empathy, or “empathic accuracy,” which was being researched around the time of

Parable of the Sower’s publication. The primary branch of “empathic accuracy,” called

“empathic understanding” was defined by William Ickes as the ability to accurately infer

the thoughts and feelings of another person (591). At the time, it was largely believed

36
that empathy could be a scientifically accurate way to interpret the feelings of others.

Butler’s hyperempathy would serve as an exaggerated version of this concept.

Today, contemporary psychiatric research has begun on a disorder termed “Hyper

Empathy Syndrome,” categorized as a Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified in

the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM), and generally characterized by the ability to “mirror the feelings and

emotions of another person and feeling things to the extreme. With hyper empathy

sometimes a person will even have a physical reaction to another’s distress or pain”

(Fenton). Almost as if Butler’s novels served as haunting predictor of the future,

Lauren’s hyperempathy syndrome sounds frighteningly similar to the Hyper Empathy

Syndrome being researched today. Thus far, only one case has been well-documented in

which a woman had a “part of her brain called the amygdala removed in an effort to treat

her severe epilepsy.” While the woman’s seizures stopped, she began to experience an

extreme emotional arousal during which “her empathy seemed to transcend her body —

the woman reported feeling physical effects along with her emotions.” In addition, she

described an “increased ability to decode others’ mental states, including their

emotions…her newly acquired ability to empathize was confirmed by her family, and she

performed exceptionally well in psychological tests of empathy” (Gholipour).

Whether or not hyperempathy syndrome is a disorder recognized by the DSM, it

does seem that having an intensely strong physical and emotional connection with

another would give a gender passer a unique advantage. Research shows that men and

women experience pain and pleasure in a similar yet different way. While some studies

have reported that men are able to better tolerate pain and others have reported the

37
opposite, a 2014 study at the Medical University of Graz in Austria showed that men and

women simply handle pain differently and psychological factors, such as anxiety or

cultural stereotypes, tend to play a role (Park “How Men and Women,” “Men vs.

Women”). Additional research suggests that in terms of pleasure for both men and

women, physiologically all orgasms are the same but feel differently based on

circumstances and what triggers them (Castleman). This is certainly true for Lauren as

her hyperempathy, her lifetime of experience with this similar yet different pain and

pleasure, convincingly allows her to pass as male.

When discussing her hyperempathy in her journal, Lauren writes that she “used to

feel every damned bruise, cut, and burn that my brothers managed to collect. Each time I

saw them hurt, I shared their pain as though I had been injured myself” (Talents 12). As

a child, Lauren even shared bleeding, and spontaneously began to bleed upon the sight of

another doing so. Patricia Melzer describes Lauren’s hyperempathy as “a physical

mechanism that prohibits the disconnection and alienation from others” and “represents

the painful and pleasurable process of crossing differences and of actually experiencing

the other’s world beyond a mere willingness to understand it.” Lauren’s hyperempathy

acts as a hindrance in the outside world; she becomes physically paralyzed with pain

when observing it in another, and even describes the act of her metaphoric death

alongside others who are actually losing their lives multiple times throughout the novel.

However, “Lauren possesses great physical and emotional strength—she is capable of

enduring suffering, privation, intense debilitating pain, and yet picking herself up to

move forward” (Govan “The Parable”). Lauren’s hyperempathy renders her extremely

vulnerable to outside attack; rather than shooting to injure, Lauren must shoot to kill in

38
order to alleviate the pain she would experience when observing a prolonged death. As a

result, Lauren appears to be much more violent than her fellow travelers. However, in

addition to pain, Lauren experiences the pleasure of others, explaining that, during sex,

she “gets the guy’s good feeling” as well as her own (Sower 12). Upon waking up while

Henry and Zahra are having an illicit sexual encounter, Lauren is immediately hit by the

pleasure of their act. Later, while engaging in sexual contact with Bankole, her partner’s

pleasure is transferred onto her, letting “the sensation take over, intense and wild” (Sower

244). Lauren has already, albeit out of her control, experienced a wide range of male

feelings and sensations due to her hyperempathy syndrome. Because of this, I argue that

Lauren’s hyperempathy contributes to her ability to pass. It is easier for her to pass as

male, displaying the physical, mental, and emotional characteristics of masculinity,

because she has already involuntarily inhabited these male spaces. Lauren is a more

believable passer because she already has an idea of what it takes to be a man.

Lauren’s gender passing plays a large role in Earthseed. She bases the religion

upon the idea that “God is change” and spends countless hours writing the first version of

“Earthseed: Books of the Living” (Sower 3). Earthseed serves as a diversion for Lauren,

distracting her from the reality of the outside world and the events of her household, but

begins to truly take shape once she begins to travel north. As the founder and leader of

Earthseed, known as “‘Shaper,’” Lauren ventures where few women have gone before

(Talents 435). Most organized religions are thought to be started by men, pray to male

gods, and feature male prophets; Lauren recognizes this as her father leads her

community’s church which, like most churches Lauren’s seen, subscribes to the idea of a

“big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God” (Sower 13). However, early in

39
Parable of the Sower Lauren questions whether God might be a “she” and, ultimately,

Earthseed is led by a woman (14). Despite Lauren’s identity as a member of the female

sex, her role as leader of Earthseed contributes to her action of passing as male. Signithia

Fordham shows that Lauren must “survive and prosper in a world organized by and for

men” and must transform her “identity in such a way that the resulting persona makes the

female appear not to be female” in order to be taken seriously as a religious leader, which

requires “discarding or at least minimizing a female identity in a self-conscious effort

to...present the appearance of being, the male dominant ‘Other’” (4). In addition, the

very name Earthseed is strikingly masculine. “Seed” brings up images of semen, as if

Lauren were metaphorically impregnating the world with her new religion. As Govan

explains, “seeds are the omnipresent symbol from the packet of acorn seed Lauren carries

with her to the metaphorical seed embodied in the grand idea she also carries” (“The

Parable”). Her gender passing is reflected in the religion itself, as Earthseed’s God is

gender ambiguous; Lauren believes that God is change, and change has “no sex at all”

(Sower 203).

Lauren’s attempts to hide her hyperempathy syndrome and her rejection of her

family’s religion further contribute towards her acts of passing. Early in Parable of the

Sower, Lauren explains that “at least three years ago, my father’s God stopped being my

God. His church stopped being my church” (7). Lauren clearly expresses her religious

questioning and disbelief in her journals, but despite her desire to disassociate with the

Baptist religion in which she was raised, she allows herself to be baptized, attends weekly

church services, and even preached a sermon following her father’s disappearance.

Lauren fears that she’ll never be able to share her true beliefs with her friends or family

40
members and keeps the Earthseed verses she writes, which eventually become the

religion’s first bible or prayer book, hidden from sight. It is only once she has been

forced out of Robledo and is far from home that she slowly begins to share Earthseed

with the religion’s future followers. Lauren’s acts of concealing her true religious beliefs

and convincingly presenting herself as a member of her family’s Baptist religion

constitute an act of religious passing. In addition, Lauren and her family are careful to

hide her hyperempathy syndrome, never revealing it to anyone outside of their immediate

family. Lauren explains that it would be better to have others think almost anything

about her than to “know the truth,” to know “just how easy it is to hurt me” (Sower 12).

Lauren’s father would punish her brothers for “risking putting ‘family business’ into the

street” and states that “there’s a whole range of things we never even hint about outside

the family. First among these is anything about my mother, my hyperempathy, and how

the two are connected. To my father, the whole business is shameful” (11). Later,

Lauren must reveal her hyperempathy to her fellow travelers, sharing “in low whispers”

and fearing that her new friends “might decide they couldn’t travel with me any longer.”

Lauren explained that, due to her hyperempathy, she feels all the pain but gets none of the

damage to a mistrusting, but ultimately sympathetic, audience (175).

Just as Lauren has been forced to pass as a member of her family’s religion,

Lauren has spent her entire life passing as a non-disabled individual. Lauren “disability

passes” in order to hide her hyperempathy syndrome from others. According to Jeffrey A.

Brune and Daniel J. Wilson, disability passing “refers to the way people conceal social

markers of impairment to avoid the stigma of disability and pass as ‘normal’” (1). While

not as widely discussed as racial or gender passing, disability passing can be seen

41
inversely in Ellen and William Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. Rather

than trying to hide a disability, Ellen Craft passes as a person with a disability so that she

can avoid speaking to people in fear of revealing that she is also engaging in gender and

racial passing. Similar to Lauren’s attempt to hide her hyperempathy, disabled

individuals frequently seek to hide their disability due to shame, fear, and other factors.

Like a physical or intellectual disability, Lauren’s hyperempathy sometimes prevents her

from doing what would typically be considered normal. As Lauren explains, her

hyperempathy greatly increases her vulnerability; because of this, her passing is essential

to her survival. In Lauren’s community and beyond, hyperempathy is shameful and

something to be looked down upon. Those with hyperempathy are frequently tortured

and enslaved. While Lauren’s friend, Harry, refers to her as manipulative after learning

about her hyperempathy (178), and Lauren’s religious and disability passing certainly

contribute to her status as trickster, these examples highlight Lauren’s willingness to do

absolutely anything in order to survive. This unmatched survival instinct is what

ultimately leads her to pass as male on her northward journey.

After Lauren establishes Acorn, her Earthseed community, which takes the shape

of a “castle on the hill,” she fears less for her safety and becomes less focused on passing

as male to ensure her survival (Talents 77). Back in Robledo, Lauren rejected the idea of

becoming a wife and mother that stayed home to take care of her children and household.

When her “boy-friend asks her to marry him and have children—about the only hope of a

better life that he can imagine, because jobs that pay cash are almost nonexistent and life

outside the walls too scary” Lauren realizes “that dream is—especially for the woman—

only a dead-end of greater responsibility and fewer possibilities” (Stillman 19-20).

42
Despite this, Lauren eventually marries Bankole and embraces her pregnancy and new

role as a mother. As a pregnant woman and, later, a breastfeeding mother, Lauren’s

femininity becomes a clear visual indicator of her biological sex. Despite the evidence of

Lauren’s passing, she does engage in many stereotypically feminine activities throughout

the novels. She is fiercely protective of her younger brothers and frequently takes on a

motherly role in Cory’s absence by cooking and cleaning. She voluntarily forms a close,

mother-daughter bond with a neighbor’s daughter due the noticeable absence of the girl’s

own mother. She maintains the feminine role in her relationship with her boyfriend in

Robledo, Curtis. She even dislikes being called “‘man’” by strangers (Sower 187) and is

consistently referred to as “‘girl’” by her husband (Sower 198). Finally, the very act of

keeping a diary, Octavia Butler’s chosen form of narration, constitutes a stereotypically

feminine action.

However, Lauren often engages in activities that can be construed as masculine.

She buys condoms at the store, producing them during sex with Bankole. She is told she

talks “macho” (Sower 168), refuses to cry during emotional events, and appears

“dangerous” to those who meet her (Talents 192). Lauren’s regular shifts from actions

that correspond to her biological sex to those that do not further reinforce the idea that her

gender, all gender, is simply a performance. According to Clara E. Agusti, Lauren

“understands her body as a site of political discourse and a fluid space where gender

categories are not mutually exclusive” (355). By performing both stereotypical

masculinity and femininity, Lauren exhibits the ability to pass from female to male.

After her daughter’s birth and kidnapping, Lauren, perhaps more than ever,

engages in the repetition that Hollinger identifies as essential to a gendered performance

43
(207). She passes back and forth between male and female as needed to ensure her safety

and survival when travelling on the road or searching for day labor, even adopting her

brother’s name, Bennett Olamina, when needed (Talents 326-35). When Lauren does

present herself as a “sane, but shabby woman rather than as a dirty, crazy man,” she

immediately places herself in danger and is attacked by two men attempting to rob her

(Talents 347, 351-2). This incident serves to highlight the vulnerability of biological

femaleness and femininity and the necessity of Lauren’s passing in her quest for survival.

Another major event that highlights Lauren’s simultaneous biological femaleness

and masculinity is her pregnancy and role as a mother. Mothers in Butler’s Parable

novels are always controversial figures, and Lauren is no exception. Butler’s mothers

never get motherhood quite right, failing to serve as role models for Lauren as both a

woman and a mother. Lauren’s own mother died during childbirth and is characterized

as a drug addict (Sower 11). She spent two years addicted to Paracetco, a popular drug at

the time meant to treat Alzheimer’s disease, which allowed her to read faster, retain

more, and make more accurate calculations. However, her addiction seems to have led to

her death and she never had the opportunity to meet Lauren, who is permanently disabled

as a result of her mother’s drug abuse (Talents 13-14). Lauren’s step-mother, Cory,

raises Lauren as her own, educates the neighborhood children, maintains a job, and keeps

an orderly household. However, when Lauren’s step-brother Keith disappears and is later

found murdered, Cory falls apart. Lauren describes her as being in a “kind of walking

coma” (Sower 124). She rejects Lauren and becomes “scared and jumpy and sick to her

stomach, and she keeps crying” (Sower 88). She abandons her responsibilities and leaves

Lauren to pick up the pieces. Lauren’s role as eldest child results in her becoming

44
“competent and self-assured,” and ultimately relegates her to the position of “nurse-child

to those younger” and forces her to take on “major responsibility for their care” (Lewis

232). Outside the Olamina household, Lauren’s neighbors, the Dunns, “have no money

for prenatal care or an abortion” and the women’s “maternal instincts didn’t kick in,”

resulting in a child who is “scrawny and splochy with sparse, stringy hair” who is later

killed by a stray bullet while unsupervised in the streets (Sower 33). Jane Donawerth

recognizes the failed mother as a common theme in feminist dystopias, writing that these

novels “present a future of repressive government, liberated gender roles, and

dysfunctional families. The mother is not idealized … but, instead, is absent or

positioned as antagonist” (49). Donawerth goes on to explain that “just as there are no

essentially feminine traits, and so no ideally nurturing mothers, so, too, there are no

essential categories of sexual identity (52). Ultimately, despite being the victim of the

maternal failures of her mother and step-mother, Lauren is unable to break the cycle. As

a mother herself, Lauren displays many of the same detachments and shortcomings that

she was subjected to as a child.

In Butler’s Parable of the Talents, the reader comes to understand Lauren’s

journals through the eyes of her now adult daughter, Larkin, who narrates the novel.

Larkin, who can never see past her mother’s faults, consistently characterizes Lauren as a

selfish person and a bad mother, not dissimilar to Lauren’s own mother and step-mother.

In her journal excerpts, Lauren expresses excitement over the news of her pregnancy

(98), and, upon Larkin’s birth, explains that she “love[s] her more than I would have

thought possible” (188). However, Larkin consistently sees things differently and

reframes this by saying that she “got the impression that my mother didn’t pay much

45
attention to being pregnant” (186). Larkin refers to her mother as a “missile, armed and

targeted” (9) and writes that she “hated her, feared her” and “never trusted her” (2). We

learn, through Lauren’s journals, that Larkin was kidnapped as a baby when Acorn was

destroyed by the Church of Christian America, a radical religious group that saw

Earthseed as a threat. Larkin explains that the children of Acorn were “snatched away

and given alone into the hands of people who believed it was their duty to break us and

remake us in the Christian American image” (288). She was adopted by “middle-class

Black members of the Church of Christian America in Seattle” (241) who were “rigid and

literal-minded,” treated her poorly, and sexually abused her (305). Lauren searched for

Larkin after her escape, but Larkin “was her weakness. Earthseed was her strength,”

Larkin explains, “No wonder it was her favorite” (323). Years later, Larkin hears about

the Earthseed “cult” on the news and sees her mother’s picture for the first time (415-7).

In the novel’s epilogue, we learn that Larkin eventually puts the pieces together and

realizes that Lauren Oya Olamina, “Shaper” of the now large and wealthy Earthseed

religion, is her biological mother (433-5). The two meet, however, Larkin feels

Earthseed was Lauren’s “first ‘child,’ and in some ways her only ‘child.’” “All Earthseed

was her family. We never really were….She never really needed us” (443-4).

Even as a mother, an unquestionably feminine role, Lauren, like her own mother

and step-mother, falters. Motherhood serves as the most essentially feminine role that

Lauren has ever had. She has been a sister, a daughter, and a partner, but none of these

roles have required her to embrace her biological sex like motherhood. Mothers in

feminist dystopias often fall short of the stereotypical vision of the perfect mother and,

like her contemporaries, Lauren is no exception. Patrcia Melzer argues that Lauren’s

46
lack of motherly instincts and failure to fully accept her responsibilities serves as a sign

of Octavia Butler’s rejection of the “white stereotypical ideal of the nurturing, self-

sacrificing mother within patriarchal society.” Rather, Melzer argues, Butler’s mother

characters are committed to the survival of the entire community, rather than to the

survival of their own children. This holds true for Lauren, who is never able to put her

Earthseed responsibilities aside for her daughter. As Shaper, as survivor, and as passer,

Lauren is both literally and figuratively unable to escape history and cannot revert from

her performance of masculinity, her need to pass as male, and take on such an

overwhelmingly feminine responsibility. If motherhood serves as the ultimate symbol of

femininity, then Lauren’s femininity has miserably failed.

Lauren, like most literary characters, is highly flawed. She is simultaneously

good and bad at almost every role she plays: daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, wife,

mother, and religious leader. She is a trickster and an enigma, drawing on her racial and

historical ancestry as well as her innate understanding of the performative nature of

gender, to pass as male. But ultimately, above all else, Lauren is a survivor by any means

necessary.

47
 III. CONCLUSION: THE INTERSECTION OF RACE AND GENDER

In the episode entitled “Citizen” of WGN America’s hit show, Underground,

which focuses on the plight of a group of runaway slaves, Miss Georgia runs a boarding

house that doubles as a station along the Underground Railroad. Georgia, a black woman

passing as white, does her best to keep a low profile and avoid conflict while hiding her

true racial identity from her neighbors. She explains her reasons for passing by simply

stating that “a sense of safety transforms the spirit.”

For both Georgia and Lauren, the sense of safety that passing affords them is both

physically and mentally transformative. Passing allows both women to build a

community, find a family, and make sacrifices to help support others. But most of all,

passing allows them to survive. Upon being thrust from the community in which she was

raised, Lauren is forced to travel northward in search of a new life. She passes as male

for the duration of her journey, cutting her hair, wearing men’s clothing, and adopting a

masculine presence. Lauren’s decision to shed her old identity is one made out of

necessity; if Lauren if to survive on her journey, she must do whatever it takes to avoid

being robbed, beaten, raped, or murdered. By passing as male, Lauren makes herself less

vulnerable and avails herself of the safety and security of the more dominant gender,

greatly reducing her risk of being harmed.

While the avid reader of science fiction might appreciate Butler’s novels for their

vivid depiction of a dystopian future, I argue that her Parables are so much more than a

48
fictionalized look at life after the apocalypse. I have explained the ways in which Butler

has overcome science fiction’s failure to accurately represent women and people of color,

as well as shown how Butler has successfully referenced and integrated the history of

slavery in the United States in order to draw important parallels between the past and

future. Butler warns us of a history that is sure to repeat itself in the near future if

changes are not made, a threat that now seems more omnipresent than ever as the nation

contends with rampant drug use, hunger, sexual slavery, racism, and a president who

seems to care little for finding a solution to these problems. As Maddie Crum points out

in an article for the Huffington Post, Butler predicted a radical zealot president whose

campaign promise was to “make America great again” (Talents 21). While Butler did not

live to see her predictions become a reality, she was painfully aware of the issues that

existed during her lifetime and those that came before her.

Primarily, Butler presents her readers with a society in which race and gender are

often barriers to survival. My argument is based upon the intersection of these two

identifying characteristics; Lauren is not just black and she is not just a woman, she is a

black woman trying to survive and thrive in a world that is built to work against her.

While other critics have looked at these aspects of Lauren’s identity in isolation, I have

analyzed the ways in which they interact, ultimately concluding that Lauren does what I

call “gender passing.”

By referencing examples of racial passing in literature, such as Ellen and William

Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, providing a comprehensive definition of

passing by relying on critics such as Juda Bennett, Kristen Schilt, and Thadious M.

Davis, and identifying mentions of passing that extend to other identifying characteristics

49
such as gender, sexuality, and disability written by critics such as Anna C. Hostert and

Julie Cary Nerad, I have laid the groundwork for my claims. Further, by relying on

prominent gender theorist Judith Butler, I have explained that gender is a social construct

that is performative in nature and separate from sex, the understanding of which is

essential to my argument; because gender is able to be performed, there is nothing

stopping Lauren, a biological female, from performing masculinity. It is Lauren’s

performance, her disposal of feminine clothing, hair, and mannerisms in exchange for

more masculine ones, that supports my conclusion. Because her survival is reliant upon

the success of her masculine performance, because Lauren does not meet the criteria for

being a “tom boy,” a cross dresser, or simply androgynous, and because of the influence

of her racial and cultural heritage as well as the novels’ abundant historical references, I

reassert my claim that Lauren passes as male, just as light-skinned blacks passed as white

before her, in order to take advantage of the privilege associated with the more dominant

group and ensure her safety, security, and survival.

Despite an abundance of academic research and cultural fanfare surrounding

Octavia Butler and the Parable novels, Lauren has not been recognized as a passer by

other critics; those who write about her gender often fail to recognize the role her race

plays in the novels and those who write about her race often disregard her gender. This

has been a shortcoming of, not only Butler’s critics, but society as a whole. Both Butler

and Lauren struggle in a world where they are oppressed by their race, gender, disability,

and socio-economic status These factors cannot be looked at in isolation in order to

understand Lauren as gender passing and, as Kimberlé Crenshaw explains,

intersectionality is needed, that the barriers to equality must be looked at in tandem, if

50
black women and girls, if people of color, if all oppressed individuals are going to be

given a chance to be visible, a chance to survive, and a chance to succeed. Just as Lauren

cannot survive if she has no voice, if she is subject to violence and abuse, if she is not

seen, neither can the millions of women whom she represents.

51
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