Over this past summer, I received my book list for my Women in Literature class that I took last semester. Scrolling through the authors that I have read several pieces from before, I couldn’t wait to have those pages in my hands. I began adding those books to my Amazon (or ThriftBooks if I’m being completely honest) shopping cart at lightning speed. The night before the semester started, I had finally collected all of my books. I arranged them in a color order stack, of course, and stood back in astonishment and pride as I slid them into the middle slot left open specifically for them on my wee little bookshelf in my wee little room.
Though these books were all beautifully painful in their storytelling of societal setback after societal setback for the illuminating female characters, one of the “complications” took me back in a way that will forever scar my heart.
Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a dystopian novel in which humankind is fundamentally changing and devolving. It was written in 1993 but the novel takes place in the Los Angeles area in the year of, you guessed it, 2024. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina of Butler’s Parable of the Sower “suffers” from the disease of Hyperempathy.
Lauren,15, has been pushed out of her home and is roaming trying to make it to a safe area while offering the services she and her group provide to those on the road and in danger. Though Lauren is almost always the one to take the brunt of the pain of growing their group as she feels the physical and emotional pain of others at an exponentially high rate, she is always offering help to others.
Though through this explanation, most would think Lauren’s strength and use of her Hyperempathy is nothing short of a miracle and could even be compared to that of a superhuman or heroine, this could not be further from the truth. Everything around Lauren’s Hyperempathy since before birth makes her the weakest link… the one everyone must walk on eggshells around as if to not set her off.
Lauren inherited this “disease” from her mother through unfavorable circumstances, and was teased relentlessly due to it. Her stepbrother used to constantly make her hurt on purpose. Her father, who was her biggest role model, never wanted to let her train in the ways the other kids did but, on the same token, never wanted to talk about her Hyperempathy.
She had led her group over three years through trials into triumphs while being just and fair. She had been the leader the group had needed while simultaneously at most times, being in unimaginable amounts of pain. However, in Butler’s 1993 idea of what 2024 would be like, Lauren’s sacrifices were not viewed as a strength, her heightened feelings were the foremost feature about her, making her the liability.
This dismissal of everything that Lauren had worked to create and preserve at great personal cost because she feels more deeply than others both emotionally and physically completely changed my perspective on life.
Now, a letter to the Laurens who have the super power of feeling:
Though Parable of the Sower was set in the year of 2024, Barbie, that was released in 2023 contained a phrase that sums up my letter to all women with feelings.
“Take my hand. Close your eyes. Now feel.”
Your ability to feel and to even be “hyperempathetic” makes us caring teachers, powerful politicians, change-creating social advocates, successful business owners, but most importantly, it makes us uniquely the women we are.
So, if you need to, take this moment to close your eyes… and feel.