Living through the Apocalypse(s): climate change and (non)human boundaries in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and literature is one way of dealing with this seemingly incomprehensible phenomenon we are now called to face. Challenging the predominance of white and male writers in science fiction, cli-fi novels by African American authors N.K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler showcase new approaches to the issue of climate change and portray new possibilities for imagining a different future. Through the powers of the protagonists of their respective series and the journeys they go through, the two authors also problematize the relationship between humanity and life on/of the planet, in alignment with the posthuman strand of thought that has recently challenged the position of Man on Earth. Through a close reading of Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy and Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the aim of this thesis is then to analyse how the two aforementioned authors depict the issue of climate change and the consequent shift in human-nonhuman boundaries in their novels.