This book was wonderfully written. I had a lot of angst reading this book and felt that it was never going to get better and it didn’t. This story made me think about society today and can this actually happen? We do currently have gated communities in America that require you to have a key to access. These communities typically have upper class people living in them and most choose to live in them for safety and to set themselves apart from society and to not allow “others” to come in. Remember the killing of Trayvon Martin the unarmed teenager who was gunned down in a gated community in Florida and the controversial stand your ground law. The author spent a lot of time focusing on Lauren Olamina and her overall feelings and ideas. She was a somewhat complex character with her being able to feel pain to wanting to create Earthseed which she did not want to connect to God but yet her writing had God is change throughout her journal.
This story was very poignant, it hit you hard into thinking could really happen? But to this extreme, I had to really think about where we are today in terms of climate change and if we were to run out of water and resources how would society react. If we had to pay police to come out and investigate and they really did nothing about it. The use of hallucinating drugs and the level of stealing and killing and all out anarchy that occurred made me think if there are signs of this today, maybe not as overt as this but it does make wonder where society is heading. We have over a billion people in America, how long can we keep producing at the level that we are and maintain the standard of living that we currently have. We have abundance of material things but nature is suffering and can only produce before it starts to bottom out.
The hyperempathy syndrome that Lauren had, while difficult made her sensitive to the world around her. I think it allowed her to be a great leader. I felt so sad for all of the lost that occurred and the barbaric way that her family died. I did not understand why they did not prepare better and did not take the opportunity to leave when it was offered. They kept saying it was a dead end and they were better off where they were but the majority of them died and Lauren was the only one who had prepared herself for the inevitable to come.
This was a great read and I am considering reading more of her books.
