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Kindred
The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1979
About the author
Octavia E. Butler
95 books17.8k followersOctavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.
After her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.
After her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 24,178 reviews
March 29, 2016
“The ease. Us, the children… I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
Butler is an author that constantly pops up on "Best sci-fi" and "Must-Read African American authors" lists and I can finally see why. This book may be my first by her, but it won't be my last. Kindred is a fascinating, horrific journey through a dark time in American history, combining eye-opening historical research with time travel.
I suppose some modern readers will want to compare this story to Outlander and there are some similarities - a woman trying to survive in the past, lots of blood-soaked history and horror, the harsh realities of being who you are in that time - but not only did this book come first, but it is far more distressing, more tied in with historical truth, and way more about surviving than it is about lusty scenes with a kilted hot dude.
It's a really important "what if" book about race. What if a modern black woman suddenly found herself transported 150+ years into the past, right into the centre of the antebellum South? The book doesn't shy away from portraying the realities of that (nothing is sugar-coated, be prepared for some upsetting scenes).
But it's also more than a gruesome look at historical racism and violence. There are many complex and interesting characters - both slaves and slave owners. Butler has written a book that goes deeper than surface level, exploring how people come to accept slavery as the norm and to justify poor treatment of slaves. Dana is horrified how easy it is. And so was I.
Kindred is so good because, not only is it well-written and emotionally effective, but it also manages to be several different important things: complex historical-fiction, intriguing science-fiction, and a memoir of slavery. For a novel so obviously fictional, it feels very real and true. Maybe because, sadly, most of it is.
I know this is one book that will stay with me for a long time.
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July 10, 2016
After reading Parable of the Sower, I had to go right out and buy Butler’s most famous novel Kindred. I was not disappointed. It is amazing that this book was written in 1976 and feels just as fresh and timely in 2016. Dana, a young African American woman who has just started a career as a writer in California, is suddenly and inexplicably yanked back in time to Maryland in 1815, where she must save a white boy named Rufus from drowning.
This becomes only the first of many time traveling episodes for Dana. She quickly realizes that Rufus is one of her own ancestors, mentioned in the family Bible. Somehow, they are connected across time because they are kindred. To assure her own future, Dana must keep Rufus alive until he has children who will some day be Dana’s family line. Unfortunately, Rufus gets in a lot of trouble.
Only moments pass in the modern world each time Dana is called away, but months or even years pass in the world of 1815. Dana watches Rufus grow from a little boy into an adult slave owner who inherits his father’s plantation. She tries her best to influence Rufus’ development, but can she overcome the poisonous institution of slavery that infects everyone it touches?
The novel is a potent metaphor for the modern African American experience and the American experience in general. We may be lulled into the feeling that we have advanced, that we have made progress as a society. But at any moment, we may be yanked back into the past and reminded of where we came from. That heritage of slavery, exploitation and racism is an integral part of our national identity, and it is never far below the surface. It can overcome us in an instant. Like Dana, we must be constantly on guard, well-equipped and ready to be yanked out of our supposedly modern and enlightened existence to deal with the ugliest parts of our nature. We are kindred with the Americans of 1815, whether we like it or not.
This becomes only the first of many time traveling episodes for Dana. She quickly realizes that Rufus is one of her own ancestors, mentioned in the family Bible. Somehow, they are connected across time because they are kindred. To assure her own future, Dana must keep Rufus alive until he has children who will some day be Dana’s family line. Unfortunately, Rufus gets in a lot of trouble.
Only moments pass in the modern world each time Dana is called away, but months or even years pass in the world of 1815. Dana watches Rufus grow from a little boy into an adult slave owner who inherits his father’s plantation. She tries her best to influence Rufus’ development, but can she overcome the poisonous institution of slavery that infects everyone it touches?
The novel is a potent metaphor for the modern African American experience and the American experience in general. We may be lulled into the feeling that we have advanced, that we have made progress as a society. But at any moment, we may be yanked back into the past and reminded of where we came from. That heritage of slavery, exploitation and racism is an integral part of our national identity, and it is never far below the surface. It can overcome us in an instant. Like Dana, we must be constantly on guard, well-equipped and ready to be yanked out of our supposedly modern and enlightened existence to deal with the ugliest parts of our nature. We are kindred with the Americans of 1815, whether we like it or not.
December 14, 2022
Wow. First book by the author but it won't be my last!
Update: Dying to watch the show but I live in Canada :(
Update: Dying to watch the show but I live in Canada :(
December 8, 2020
Later Edit: I've thought about this review a lot and I think I regret the tone I used. I stand by what I wrote about the novel but I might have been too aggressive which is not really me. However, people found their thoughts in my review so it is going to stay. Please do not take this review as personal attack if you liked this novel as it is not meant to be.
DNF at 50% (with some skipping)
What came first, the egg or the chicken? What came first, the badly written book or the reading slump? Hard questions to answer but one thing is certain. It definitely did not help forcing me to reach 50% of this book. I only did it because of my rating rule and because I wanted to bitch about it. So here it is again the time for an unpopular opinion.
I though this book to be TERRIBLE. I don’t even know with what to start. I understand it is written by a woman of color in a time when it was an extraordinary accomplishment. I get and admire that. I also get that she had an agenda to prove how easily one can accept slavery, even in our modern world. However, the above is not a relevant excuse for bad writing, cartoonish characters, poorly conceived plot and ridiculous dialogue. Also, the use of time travel had nothing to do with SF, there was no explanation of the phenomenon, and it felt only as a lazy gimmick to prove her point. Yes, others used it as well but better, in my opinion.
Let’s start with the plot. We are in 1976 America, a young black woman is married with a white man and she suddenly starts to repeatedly go back in time in the antebellum South so she can save a child (and later young man) who proves to be her ancestor. It quickly becomes obvious that she has to save him every time he is in trouble, otherwise she would not exist in the present time. So far so good, the premise sounds interesting.
Too bad the execution was poor. Firstly, the two pair accepted way to easy the time travelling part. The same happened with the people in the past. You tell me that a person in the 19th century would not freak out and try to murder any source of such an abomination? The dialogues between the husband and wife after the first two times she comes back are laughable. At first he doesn’t believe her although she disappeared and then he doesn’t understand why she is scared. Really? I would lose control of myself it that happened, screaming my ass into a mental hospital.
Later, when they both land in the past, I could not believe how easily they get used to the roles they had to play there, her as a slave and him as the white master. I totally understand that she had to lay low in order to survive but that doesn’t mean she had to be acceptant in her mind or find excuses for that little piece of shit, Rufus. And to convinced Alice that is ok to be raped so you can survive…. Nope.
I disliked all the characters, especially Dana and her detachment; the author did not make me feel anything except annoyance. I know I am in minority here but it can’t be helped, I can’t find many positive thoughts about this novel.
DNF at 50% (with some skipping)
What came first, the egg or the chicken? What came first, the badly written book or the reading slump? Hard questions to answer but one thing is certain. It definitely did not help forcing me to reach 50% of this book. I only did it because of my rating rule and because I wanted to bitch about it. So here it is again the time for an unpopular opinion.
I though this book to be TERRIBLE. I don’t even know with what to start. I understand it is written by a woman of color in a time when it was an extraordinary accomplishment. I get and admire that. I also get that she had an agenda to prove how easily one can accept slavery, even in our modern world. However, the above is not a relevant excuse for bad writing, cartoonish characters, poorly conceived plot and ridiculous dialogue. Also, the use of time travel had nothing to do with SF, there was no explanation of the phenomenon, and it felt only as a lazy gimmick to prove her point. Yes, others used it as well but better, in my opinion.
Let’s start with the plot. We are in 1976 America, a young black woman is married with a white man and she suddenly starts to repeatedly go back in time in the antebellum South so she can save a child (and later young man) who proves to be her ancestor. It quickly becomes obvious that she has to save him every time he is in trouble, otherwise she would not exist in the present time. So far so good, the premise sounds interesting.
Too bad the execution was poor. Firstly, the two pair accepted way to easy the time travelling part. The same happened with the people in the past. You tell me that a person in the 19th century would not freak out and try to murder any source of such an abomination? The dialogues between the husband and wife after the first two times she comes back are laughable. At first he doesn’t believe her although she disappeared and then he doesn’t understand why she is scared. Really? I would lose control of myself it that happened, screaming my ass into a mental hospital.
Later, when they both land in the past, I could not believe how easily they get used to the roles they had to play there, her as a slave and him as the white master. I totally understand that she had to lay low in order to survive but that doesn’t mean she had to be acceptant in her mind or find excuses for that little piece of shit, Rufus. And to convinced Alice that is ok to be raped so you can survive…. Nope.
I disliked all the characters, especially Dana and her detachment; the author did not make me feel anything except annoyance. I know I am in minority here but it can’t be helped, I can’t find many positive thoughts about this novel.
April 3, 2021
4.5 stars
Like, literally disappeared. One minute she was there and the next minute she was rescuing a drowning white boy.
And when she turns around, she gets called the n-word by his parents as they demand an explanation for a slave to be out and about like she is.
And then she zips back to the future to her white husband.
Shocked, shaken and disturbed, Dana slowly realizes that the child she rescued, Rufus, is her many times great ancestor.
And as she begins to disappear again, she realizes that in order for her to stay alive, she's going to have to survive these time-jumps long enough to keep her ancestor alive.
This is one for the ages.
This book was truly incredible. And awful. And gut-wrenching. And heart-breaking.
It was the first science fiction work written by a black woman and she truly knocked it out of the park.
I am truly struggling with my descriptions - all I really have to say is check it out. You can read all the history books in the world but nothing hits quite like a story set on a slave plantation in the 1800s.
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Dana and her husband just settled into their first house together when she...disappeared.
“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free."
Like, literally disappeared. One minute she was there and the next minute she was rescuing a drowning white boy.
And when she turns around, she gets called the n-word by his parents as they demand an explanation for a slave to be out and about like she is.
And then she zips back to the future to her white husband.
Shocked, shaken and disturbed, Dana slowly realizes that the child she rescued, Rufus, is her many times great ancestor.
And as she begins to disappear again, she realizes that in order for her to stay alive, she's going to have to survive these time-jumps long enough to keep her ancestor alive.
She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.Whew.
This is one for the ages.
This book was truly incredible. And awful. And gut-wrenching. And heart-breaking.
It was the first science fiction work written by a black woman and she truly knocked it out of the park.
I am truly struggling with my descriptions - all I really have to say is check it out. You can read all the history books in the world but nothing hits quite like a story set on a slave plantation in the 1800s.
YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads
May 3, 2019
Octavia Butler is an amazing writer. If you enjoy reading SF/F, or even an interest in speculative fiction, you would like her work.
Kindred, first published in 1979, would become her most best-selling novel.
This is also a painful book to read because of its graphic depiction of slavery and Butler wastes no time in demonizing what was demonic. Describing the slave life from the perspective of a time-travelling modern woman, Butler’s strong narrative prose is in high form for a low burden – to illustrate to contemporary readers the horrors of slavery and in this context to draw a comparison with life of our time, making the transition to the early 1800s all the more stark and evil in contrast.
Kindred is also an allegory for our modern times, still burdened by the wounds of slavery and a racial consciousness in our society that has scars that won’t heal. Butler shows us, though, that we as a nation and a people are bound, as kindred, between races and with a shared history.
Back in the 90s I was working in Washington DC and I had the opportunity to meet a group of folks from Africa. Multi-lingual (with French predominant among the diplomats) I found the people I met worldly, intelligent, generous and interesting to talk to – and they were singularly not American. I think this was the first time I had met a large group of people from another continent and the idea struck me how much closer I was to my black neighbors than I was to these people I had just met.
Butler adeptly reveals in Kindred, in multiple ways, the many degrees of our shared humanity. But more narrowly, Butler is pointing out our kinship as Americans, dates like 1976 and July 4th must be intentional, how the shared history of slavery – between black Americans and white Americans – has bound us together.
Butler also, once again, has created a strong female protagonist in Dana whose endurance and courage are remarkable, made more evident by the fact that she has a unique viewpoint. Dana, in some respects, becomes a symbol of a present-day African-American woman, both made stronger from her heritage, but also still bearing the wounds of past wrongs.
Kindred also displays Butler’s amazing talents in storytelling, using dramatic irony expertly. A reader may notice a subtle, though strangely twisted reference to a scene in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Introspective and somber, with many questions that remain unanswered, Kindred is a powerful work told by an artist of genius ability.
Kindred, first published in 1979, would become her most best-selling novel.
This is also a painful book to read because of its graphic depiction of slavery and Butler wastes no time in demonizing what was demonic. Describing the slave life from the perspective of a time-travelling modern woman, Butler’s strong narrative prose is in high form for a low burden – to illustrate to contemporary readers the horrors of slavery and in this context to draw a comparison with life of our time, making the transition to the early 1800s all the more stark and evil in contrast.
Kindred is also an allegory for our modern times, still burdened by the wounds of slavery and a racial consciousness in our society that has scars that won’t heal. Butler shows us, though, that we as a nation and a people are bound, as kindred, between races and with a shared history.
Back in the 90s I was working in Washington DC and I had the opportunity to meet a group of folks from Africa. Multi-lingual (with French predominant among the diplomats) I found the people I met worldly, intelligent, generous and interesting to talk to – and they were singularly not American. I think this was the first time I had met a large group of people from another continent and the idea struck me how much closer I was to my black neighbors than I was to these people I had just met.
Butler adeptly reveals in Kindred, in multiple ways, the many degrees of our shared humanity. But more narrowly, Butler is pointing out our kinship as Americans, dates like 1976 and July 4th must be intentional, how the shared history of slavery – between black Americans and white Americans – has bound us together.
Butler also, once again, has created a strong female protagonist in Dana whose endurance and courage are remarkable, made more evident by the fact that she has a unique viewpoint. Dana, in some respects, becomes a symbol of a present-day African-American woman, both made stronger from her heritage, but also still bearing the wounds of past wrongs.
Kindred also displays Butler’s amazing talents in storytelling, using dramatic irony expertly. A reader may notice a subtle, though strangely twisted reference to a scene in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Introspective and somber, with many questions that remain unanswered, Kindred is a powerful work told by an artist of genius ability.
February 11, 2017
Octavia Butler amazes me. She writes science fiction that is full of complicated ideas about race and sexuality that are completely readable. I’ll innocently start reading, thinking only to get a solid start on the book, and suddenly discover I’m halfway through the story. That isn’t to imply she’s a light-weight, however; her works are emotionally and ethically dense, the subject of numerous high school and college essays. A recent read of Dawn inspired a number of recommendations for Butler and a buddy read of her book Kindred.
*************
Full reviews at my blog: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/0...
Why? Because 1) gramazon can't have my reviews, 2) because I don't feel like being censored according to some twit's whims.
*************
Full reviews at my blog: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/0...
Why? Because 1) gramazon can't have my reviews, 2) because I don't feel like being censored according to some twit's whims.
March 7, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: Maryland
Octavia E. Butler's biography could just break your damn heart.
Her father died when she was 10, she had no siblings, her family was poor.
She was a self-described “loner,” a woman who was tall and awkward and friendless. From the recent bits and pieces I researched, as I started this novel, I gathered that her romantic life was either private or nonexistent. (Was she gay? Asexual? Sickly?) As far as I could tell, she had substantial medical issues and lived with her mother, and died, far too young, at 58, of a stroke.
It's hard not to hum a few bars of Sarah Vaughn's “Lonely Woman” while sorting through Ms. Butler's online photo gallery.
And yet. . . she was a writer, and not just any writer, but a female writer of science fiction.
This is so extraordinary to me, my closeted sci-fi self has always rejoiced, just knowing that Ms. Butler's work was still out there for me to explore.
In fact, while I was researching titles for this figurative road trip of mine, I set aside my devotion to one of my all-time favorite writers, Anne Tyler, to give Ms. Butler's “sci-fi” novel from 1979 a try.
(For the record, my favorite novel set in Maryland is Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant ).
So. . . how was Kindred?
Conceptually: fantastic!
A twenty-something Black woman, married to an older white man in the 1970s, disappears from her new house in California and time travels to 1815 to a plantation near Baltimore, Maryland.
The reader isn't given any more info than that. Dana, our time traveling protagonist, appears to be connected to the slave owners in Maryland, and, similar to Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife, you are asked merely to suspend your disbelief that this can happen.
In other words, if the genre of “science fiction” makes you uncomfortable, take heart, there aren't any other aspects of it here. Just one piece you need to buy into: Dana time travels and, unlike poor Henry from TTTW, she does not arrive naked at her next destination.
What Ms. Butler imagined here is juicy and delicious. . . a modern Black woman, married to a white man, is forced to have everything threatened, everything taken away from her. When her husband grabs on to her arm and travels with her on her a later journey, the plot thickens. Wow! What a crazy idea, to throw this couple and their modern ideology into the Southern cookpot. . . So much could happen here!!
So. . . does it?
Nope.
Not only that, the dialogue here is some of the worst I've ever encountered. It wasn't long before this book became the next entry on my “nobody talks like this” shelf.
Nobody talks like this to each other, and certainly not two romantic partners. The “verbal” exchanges between our young couple, Dana and Kevin, were flat-out painful for me.
I did not experience one page of this read without thinking: this is a book. I'm reading a book.
I never, not once, felt as though I had emerged into this world.
This novel lacked authentic dialogue, character development, and depth. I felt like I was in a world of cardboard cutouts for characters and poster boards for scenery.
On page 208, our time traveling protagonist, Dana, declares, “I wanted so much for it to be over.”
So did I, Dana.
Current location: Maryland
Octavia E. Butler's biography could just break your damn heart.
Her father died when she was 10, she had no siblings, her family was poor.
She was a self-described “loner,” a woman who was tall and awkward and friendless. From the recent bits and pieces I researched, as I started this novel, I gathered that her romantic life was either private or nonexistent. (Was she gay? Asexual? Sickly?) As far as I could tell, she had substantial medical issues and lived with her mother, and died, far too young, at 58, of a stroke.
It's hard not to hum a few bars of Sarah Vaughn's “Lonely Woman” while sorting through Ms. Butler's online photo gallery.
And yet. . . she was a writer, and not just any writer, but a female writer of science fiction.
This is so extraordinary to me, my closeted sci-fi self has always rejoiced, just knowing that Ms. Butler's work was still out there for me to explore.
In fact, while I was researching titles for this figurative road trip of mine, I set aside my devotion to one of my all-time favorite writers, Anne Tyler, to give Ms. Butler's “sci-fi” novel from 1979 a try.
(For the record, my favorite novel set in Maryland is Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant ).
So. . . how was Kindred?
Conceptually: fantastic!
A twenty-something Black woman, married to an older white man in the 1970s, disappears from her new house in California and time travels to 1815 to a plantation near Baltimore, Maryland.
The reader isn't given any more info than that. Dana, our time traveling protagonist, appears to be connected to the slave owners in Maryland, and, similar to Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife, you are asked merely to suspend your disbelief that this can happen.
In other words, if the genre of “science fiction” makes you uncomfortable, take heart, there aren't any other aspects of it here. Just one piece you need to buy into: Dana time travels and, unlike poor Henry from TTTW, she does not arrive naked at her next destination.
What Ms. Butler imagined here is juicy and delicious. . . a modern Black woman, married to a white man, is forced to have everything threatened, everything taken away from her. When her husband grabs on to her arm and travels with her on her a later journey, the plot thickens. Wow! What a crazy idea, to throw this couple and their modern ideology into the Southern cookpot. . . So much could happen here!!
So. . . does it?
Nope.
Not only that, the dialogue here is some of the worst I've ever encountered. It wasn't long before this book became the next entry on my “nobody talks like this” shelf.
Nobody talks like this to each other, and certainly not two romantic partners. The “verbal” exchanges between our young couple, Dana and Kevin, were flat-out painful for me.
I did not experience one page of this read without thinking: this is a book. I'm reading a book.
I never, not once, felt as though I had emerged into this world.
This novel lacked authentic dialogue, character development, and depth. I felt like I was in a world of cardboard cutouts for characters and poster boards for scenery.
On page 208, our time traveling protagonist, Dana, declares, “I wanted so much for it to be over.”
So did I, Dana.
May 17, 2019
“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
I wanted to love this book. I knew the slave narrative might be harrowing (though it’s not overly graphic), but it has an average GR rating over four stars, features time-travel dilemmas, has a strong, intelligent, kind, and practical female protagonist, and gives thought-provoking insights into the complexity of US race relations in the 1800s and, to a lesser extent, the 1970s.
It is a good and powerful, exciting and educational book. But something didn’t quite connect for me. I hoped that composing my thoughts would make me see it in a more favourable light - and it has. Perhaps I just read it too fast to digest it properly.
Kindred
One word, seven letters, but several interpretations, all with emotional impact.
* The most common and literal meaning relates to ties of blood: our immediate family. The kindred we can’t choose, even if we hate or despise them.
* But blood is too narrow to include one’s partner, or any adopted children, honorary uncles and aunts, or step parents. And what about children born to slave women who could never claim their father/owner’s family as kindred, even if they wanted to?
* So it widens to “kindred spirits” - our closest friends and allies, with whom we share attitudes, experiences, and interests. Regardless of biological parentage, a slave child’s kindred can only be fellow slaves.
* Ultimately, Butler’s message is that black and white (and brown and pink and yellow), male and female (and everything else), we are all kindred. One race: the human race. Race as a social construct. (See Live Science and Bill Nye.)
This is not a Christian book, and I am not a Christian person, but I was reminded of the message of Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan. The man who asked “Who is my neighbour?” was shown that the answer was everyone in need. That’s a tough message to apply, but given the turmoil in the word right now, it is as important as it ever was.
Plot - No Spoilers
The book is easy to summarise in a way that gives no more spoilers than the first three pages and back cover. Dana is a 26-year old middle class African-American living in 1976 LA with her white husband, Kevin. Somehow, she comes unstuck in time (like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five and Henry in The Time Traveller’s Wife) and suddenly finds herself on a plantation in Maryland in 1815.
This happens several times, over twenty years of 19th century time, with the usual issues and dilemmas of time travel, but that is just the mechanism for depicting the horrors of slavery, and the complex power and sexual relationships that result, as well as exploring the source of hatred (nature versus nurture), acquiescence, revenge, and the types and possibility of redemption and freedom.
Kindred is more historical and political adventure than sci-fi. It’s fast-paced and, despite the subject, quite an easy read. And the ending is satisfying, but not ludicrously sentimental or tidy.
Owning and Being Owned
In 1976, Dana is proud of her independence, having repeatedly fought to do what she wanted, rather than settle for what was expected. In the 19th century, she has to consider the terrifying risks and consequences of striving for even a tiny bit of independence. The power-play between master and slave can acquire aspects of Stockholm Syndrome.
Although the story is told by Dana and she is the central character, at least as important is Rufus Weyland, son of the plantation owner. The way his attitude and behaviour change as he grows up is echoed in the more recent The Help, though it is more complex here. As a small child, he’s allowed to have slave children as friends, even as his father buys and sells their families, beats and sleeps with them.
Gradually, Rufus develops an unrequited “destructive single-minded love” for two women that I never fully understood. With one woman, it’s sexual, so he repeatedly rapes her.
“There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.”
Of course, Rufus doesn’t think of it as rape because she doesn’t try to stop him and, more importantly, he owns her. So the woman endures, but “She forgave him nothing, forgot nothing.”
Dana sees how manipulative Rufus is, she experiences it herself. She sees the bad in him and occasionally slivers of good. She tries to enlighten him, but is remarkably forgiving when he follows in his father’s footsteps. More so than I could be, which is perhaps another reason why it didn’t quite ring true for me.
He’s of his Time. Does that make it OK?
“He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.”
A common debate on GR and in the wider world (yes, there is one, I’m led to believe), is to what extent we judge those in the past by the standards of our time.
* Should we cast aside books by people who we now know had hateful views and who maybe did hateful deeds?
* Should books about the past be sanitised and redacted to make them acceptable to modern sensibilities?
Dana is confronted by this dilemma in a more direct and personal way. She wants to teach Rufus to think of and treat his slaves kindly, but as his views become darker and more complicated, her opinion of him is ever more conflicted - exacerbated by the power he has over her.
* How much of what happens can be blamed on the surrounding cultural norms?
* Does a slave owner who beats relatively rarely and gently deserve leniency?
Identity: Colour, Gender, Social Rank, Ancestry
Who is Dana, and how free is she? In both periods she can be seen as, and is sometimes called, “a white nigger”. In 1815, she is assumed to be a slave just because of her colour, all the more inferior because she's female. But the fact she talks white and educated causes confusion, resentment, and conflict. And she comes to realise that even in 1976, she is not entirely free of her heritage, despite her relative detachment from it (though she has read at least some of her ten books about black history even before she has a specific need to do so).
There are similar questions for many other characters, especially slaves who consider running away in the hope of freedom (or death), those who stay because they want to keep their children, and those who trade privilege and suffering (such as sleeping with a boss they hate to have slightly gentler conditions).
I could write a whole review about her husband, Kevin: how he - and their marriage - is changed by her experiences, and his. But I won't this time; it's interesting and important, but secondary.
The other huge aspect is ancestry, and how that defines one's identity, both in terms of racial identity, but also in terms of character. What if you are appalled by who and what your forebears do are and do? (An issue those who research their family trees often have to face.)
Words and Language
This is a book you read for the ideas and story, rather than the language. But Butler makes her words work in a book that’s barely 300 pages: a single word title, and short, elemental chapter titles: The River, The Fire, The Fall, The Fight, The Storm, The Rope.
Of course, “the N word” is used frequently. Given the setting, it would be bizarre if it were not.
Human Pantone
The image at the top is from this short blog post about race:
http://www.laurassoapbox.net/2012/08/...
But it is actually part of Angélica Daas’ “Human Pantone” art project, which I saw on posters in Bilbao earlier this year:
http://brazigzag.com/culture/angelica...
July 22, 2008
On October 5, 2004, Octavia E. Butler visited my graduate university to give a lecture and book signing. I was really impressed by her. She actually spent several hours at the university, giving a public interview with one of the professors, then a short lecture to a large auditorium, then a book signing. I even skipped class in order to attend.
The interview was really fascinating, where Butler answered questions about how she worked to write Kindred and how she felt about the characters and how the result all turned out. The professor kind of threw Butler for a loop once, when she pulled an interpretation of the book out of left field, and Butler blinked, and slowly said she didn't write with that interpretation at all in mind, but that she was of the opinion that any interpretation the reader reaches is a valid one. I thought she handled the question particularly well.
In the lecture, Butler talked mostly about how she writes, her writing style, her relationship with her fans, and the book she was currently writing, Fledgling. The signing afterwards was very informal, but I didn’t try to stay and chat. Butler had lots of professors and awestruck students who were all trying to catch her attention. I got my book signed, said a polite thank you, and left happy.
Fledgling turned out to be the last book Butler wrote. She died unexpectedly in early 2006. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to meet her.
The book: Was good. A time-traveling story dealing with love, gender, race, racism, and responsibility. It was beautifully and rather painfully done. I never would have found it if it hadn’t been for the author visit, and I’m rather sad about that.
The interview was really fascinating, where Butler answered questions about how she worked to write Kindred and how she felt about the characters and how the result all turned out. The professor kind of threw Butler for a loop once, when she pulled an interpretation of the book out of left field, and Butler blinked, and slowly said she didn't write with that interpretation at all in mind, but that she was of the opinion that any interpretation the reader reaches is a valid one. I thought she handled the question particularly well.
In the lecture, Butler talked mostly about how she writes, her writing style, her relationship with her fans, and the book she was currently writing, Fledgling. The signing afterwards was very informal, but I didn’t try to stay and chat. Butler had lots of professors and awestruck students who were all trying to catch her attention. I got my book signed, said a polite thank you, and left happy.
Fledgling turned out to be the last book Butler wrote. She died unexpectedly in early 2006. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to meet her.
The book: Was good. A time-traveling story dealing with love, gender, race, racism, and responsibility. It was beautifully and rather painfully done. I never would have found it if it hadn’t been for the author visit, and I’m rather sad about that.
July 6, 2017
I wish we could read more authors like Octavia Butler, bell hooks, and Celeste Ng in our English classes instead of white men like Ernest Hemingway. I loved Kindred because it uses the science-fiction/fantasy genre to expose the cruelties and horrors of slavery and racism in an innovative way. Similar to what author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his book
Nothing Ever Dies
, the United States's education system often informs us of issues like war and slavery through a sanitized, depoliticized lens. Though we "learn" about these events, we do not recognize the cruelty and evil our country's past generations committed - and how we are also complicit if we do not act for justice today. Octavia Butler's Kindred tells a gripping tale and reminds us of how we must not let the stories of our past happen again.
Kindred follows 26-year-old Dana, a black woman who lives in California and gets transported to the antebellum South. There, she meets Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner who will go on to sire the daughter who becomes Dana's ancestor. Dana is teleported back in time over and over again to protect Rufus from death, but each time she travels to the past, she encounters increasing amounts of danger and abuse that put her own life at risk for extinction.
Butler creates a compelling cast of characters in Kindred. Dana, Kevin, Rufus, Alice, etc. all have complex motivations and their relationships with one another feel replete with nuanced power dynamics, as well as love and hate and fear. In addition to imbuing Kindred with a fast-moving and surprising plot, Butler succeeds at showing and not telling the atrocities of slavery through Dana's travels backward and forward in time, in particular her forced journey to acclimate to plantation life in the nineteenth century. Through detailing the pain Dana suffers and the pain she sees her fellow enslaved individuals suffer at the hands of white folk, Butler encourages us to consider the challenges of surviving in an unjust world, just like the one we live in now. Why is it that our ancestors, as well as a lot of us today, are so willing to look away from the evils of racism? How do we stay true to our values in a society that so often pits minorities against each other, gives power to those who disempowers others, etc.? Kindred makes us think about these questions without offering simple answers, providing proof of its thoughtfulness and strength as a novel.
Overall, a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I honestly feel ashamed at my younger self for not reading authors like Butler sooner and for buying into problematic portrayals of slavery, like Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I am doing my best to make up for it now by reading more books about social justice, by donating to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations fighting the good fight, and by having conversations about these topics, volunteering, etc. As a companion to Kindred, I would recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and giving to groups that fight mass incarceration, as that injustice serves in many ways as the slavery of our time. Thank you to Ms. Butler for creating art that allows us to see injustice and to fight it.
Kindred follows 26-year-old Dana, a black woman who lives in California and gets transported to the antebellum South. There, she meets Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner who will go on to sire the daughter who becomes Dana's ancestor. Dana is teleported back in time over and over again to protect Rufus from death, but each time she travels to the past, she encounters increasing amounts of danger and abuse that put her own life at risk for extinction.
Butler creates a compelling cast of characters in Kindred. Dana, Kevin, Rufus, Alice, etc. all have complex motivations and their relationships with one another feel replete with nuanced power dynamics, as well as love and hate and fear. In addition to imbuing Kindred with a fast-moving and surprising plot, Butler succeeds at showing and not telling the atrocities of slavery through Dana's travels backward and forward in time, in particular her forced journey to acclimate to plantation life in the nineteenth century. Through detailing the pain Dana suffers and the pain she sees her fellow enslaved individuals suffer at the hands of white folk, Butler encourages us to consider the challenges of surviving in an unjust world, just like the one we live in now. Why is it that our ancestors, as well as a lot of us today, are so willing to look away from the evils of racism? How do we stay true to our values in a society that so often pits minorities against each other, gives power to those who disempowers others, etc.? Kindred makes us think about these questions without offering simple answers, providing proof of its thoughtfulness and strength as a novel.
Overall, a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I honestly feel ashamed at my younger self for not reading authors like Butler sooner and for buying into problematic portrayals of slavery, like Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I am doing my best to make up for it now by reading more books about social justice, by donating to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations fighting the good fight, and by having conversations about these topics, volunteering, etc. As a companion to Kindred, I would recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and giving to groups that fight mass incarceration, as that injustice serves in many ways as the slavery of our time. Thank you to Ms. Butler for creating art that allows us to see injustice and to fight it.
March 15, 2022
This took me a week to finish, but that's a compliment.
It's a brutal and grueling read, and it takes ages to get through because it should, but I appreciated every minute even still.
I found this to be really unflinching and realistic in its depiction of slavery and what people are like, even those white people who are just "cogs in the machine" of slavery, even when the plot or a feel-good moment would have benefited from a break from that, which is an achievement (and I imagine something that the author would have had to fight for, considering the status quo of most slavery novels and films).
I thought this was primarily an exploration of humanity - or at least that's what I got from it - but the sci-fi elements, the interracial relationship study, the theme of time's impact and lack of impact...
All of it hit.
A one of a kind book, really!
Bottom line: I have to read more Octavia Butler for sure.
-----------------
currently-reading updates
doing my homework (assigning myself classic books because i miss being in school)
-----------------
reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
book 1: caste
book 2: business not as usual
book 3: the color purple
book 4: the parking lot attendant
book 5: kindred
It's a brutal and grueling read, and it takes ages to get through because it should, but I appreciated every minute even still.
I found this to be really unflinching and realistic in its depiction of slavery and what people are like, even those white people who are just "cogs in the machine" of slavery, even when the plot or a feel-good moment would have benefited from a break from that, which is an achievement (and I imagine something that the author would have had to fight for, considering the status quo of most slavery novels and films).
I thought this was primarily an exploration of humanity - or at least that's what I got from it - but the sci-fi elements, the interracial relationship study, the theme of time's impact and lack of impact...
All of it hit.
A one of a kind book, really!
Bottom line: I have to read more Octavia Butler for sure.
-----------------
currently-reading updates
doing my homework (assigning myself classic books because i miss being in school)
-----------------
reading books by Black authors for Black History Month!
book 1: caste
book 2: business not as usual
book 3: the color purple
book 4: the parking lot attendant
book 5: kindred
December 14, 2022
As America continues to struggle with its white supremacy tendencies, books like Octavia E. Butler's Kindred can offer us insight and guidance. In Kindred, Dana Edwards travels back through time to a farm in pre-emancipation Maryland and witnesses/experiences slavery first hand.
Kindred starts at the conclusion of Dana Edwards' time-travel adventures and then proceeds with Dana's first person narrative describing her experiences from beginning to end. This allows the narrator, Dana, to know everything that is happening before it happens while remaining unable to do anything to change the outcome. This emphasizes the fact that we can't change history.
When Dana has finally managed to return home for good, she has lost part of one arm. Octavia Butler stated this was to emphasize that one can not experience slavery and remain whole.
America may never fully recover from the damage caused by slavery, but we will never be able to move forward towards our national ideals until Americans accept that slavery has been an integral part of our history. America's current infatuation with white supremacy is an ugly offspring of our ugly history.
Kindred is now my favorite novel and Octavia E. Butler is now my favorite novelist. I'm about to do an Octavia Butler binge. Please bear with me.
13 December 2022: 10:17 AM PST
"I just watched the 1st episode of the @KindredFX series on @hulu. It was great. It's based on Octavia Butler’s Kindred novel. One must make changes to adapt a novel to a multi-season TV series. So far, the changes have enhanced the show."
@TimothySNull on Twitter
13 December 2022: 7:12 PM PST
"Part way through episode 7, I almost lost faith, but by the end of episode 8, I became a believer again. Season 1 of @KindredFX was fantastic! Different in many ways from the book, but marvelous nonetheless. I'm ready for Season 2!"
@TimothySNull on Twitter
Kindred starts at the conclusion of Dana Edwards' time-travel adventures and then proceeds with Dana's first person narrative describing her experiences from beginning to end. This allows the narrator, Dana, to know everything that is happening before it happens while remaining unable to do anything to change the outcome. This emphasizes the fact that we can't change history.
When Dana has finally managed to return home for good, she has lost part of one arm. Octavia Butler stated this was to emphasize that one can not experience slavery and remain whole.
America may never fully recover from the damage caused by slavery, but we will never be able to move forward towards our national ideals until Americans accept that slavery has been an integral part of our history. America's current infatuation with white supremacy is an ugly offspring of our ugly history.
Kindred is now my favorite novel and Octavia E. Butler is now my favorite novelist. I'm about to do an Octavia Butler binge. Please bear with me.
13 December 2022: 10:17 AM PST
"I just watched the 1st episode of the @KindredFX series on @hulu. It was great. It's based on Octavia Butler’s Kindred novel. One must make changes to adapt a novel to a multi-season TV series. So far, the changes have enhanced the show."
@TimothySNull on Twitter
13 December 2022: 7:12 PM PST
"Part way through episode 7, I almost lost faith, but by the end of episode 8, I became a believer again. Season 1 of @KindredFX was fantastic! Different in many ways from the book, but marvelous nonetheless. I'm ready for Season 2!"
@TimothySNull on Twitter
November 14, 2018
A unique look at slave-era America thanks to a time-traveling twist. Should be shelved with the classics. Riveting from the first page and doesn’t let up.
I’m always a fan of throwing in a little sci-fi, but here it really, really works. Most novels on this subject tend to look at race relations from one time period. Nothing wrong with that, but there was something wholly shocking and eye-opening about having these characters hop from a modern (1970s) lens to pre-Civil War society.
This is my first Octavia E. Butler novel but I’m already a huge fan. Which of her books should I read next??
I’m always a fan of throwing in a little sci-fi, but here it really, really works. Most novels on this subject tend to look at race relations from one time period. Nothing wrong with that, but there was something wholly shocking and eye-opening about having these characters hop from a modern (1970s) lens to pre-Civil War society.
This is my first Octavia E. Butler novel but I’m already a huge fan. Which of her books should I read next??
March 5, 2024
My first 5 star of 2024 that isn't a re-read or manga.
A truly harrowing read that was impossible to put down. I listened to this on audiobook all in one sitting and didn't want to stop, but yet at times, during the darkest moments, I wanted to take a break. Ugh, I need to film a review and don't even know where to start!
A truly harrowing read that was impossible to put down. I listened to this on audiobook all in one sitting and didn't want to stop, but yet at times, during the darkest moments, I wanted to take a break. Ugh, I need to film a review and don't even know where to start!
August 16, 2017
I had no idea what Kindred is about prior to reading it, I previously read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and thought it was marvelous, and Kindred seems to be her most popular work judging by Goodreads ratings. So buying a copy of Kindred without knowing anything about it was a no-brainer. I even deliberately avoided looking at the book's synopsis before hand, I just wanted to get to know the book as I read on. I hoped for a pleasant surprise, which I did get. This is only the second Octavia Butler book I have read and I already worship her.
Kindred is about Dana, an African American woman who finds herself time travelling involuntarily to Maryland in the early nineteenth century. It is not explained how or why this happen to her, the mechanic of it is entirely irrelevant to the story. The novel is about her experience of slavery in the past. Her fate becomes intertwined with Rufus, a white ancestor who is the only son of a plantation owner and who somehow triggers her time traveling trips every time he is in mortal danger, a situation that arises more frequently to him than to most people. While there she experiences the woes of slavery first hand, including whipping, beating, degradation and humiliation.
This is a harrowing and emotional read, I almost cry manly tears during some of the chapters. I never pondered what it may have been like to be a slave, it is not exactly a contingency which is at all likely to ever arise. However, Ms Butler - genius that she was - made me feel it through the eyes of her protagonist. The pains and humiliation of slavery resonates with me even though there ought to be nothing to resonate. I kind of winced every time a stroke of a whip is described. This is not a comfortable read but highly engrossing and thought provoking. The book is very much character-centric, the relationship between Dana and Rufus is very complex and fascinating. Dana's husband Kevin who also become embroiled in time traveling and is marooned in the nineteenth century for years without his wife adds to her complications, his reaction to returning to the present time (1976) is entirely believable and again resonates strongly.
The book reminds me a little of Connie Willis's excellent Doomsday Book, which is about time travelling to the fourteenth century and also a harrowing (yet wonderful) read, though the emphasis of that book is on poverty, hardship and diseases rather than slavery. The involuntary time traveling aspect of the book reminds me of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, though Kindred predates it, and Kindred is certainly not a romantic book.
Octavia Butler was not one of those literary writers who try to avoid the science fiction label like the plague even while using sf tropes in their works, she has always loved sf and gladly embraced the genre (see photo below).
That said, Kindred is also not science fiction. The author described it as a "grim fantasy" and deliberately did not put any science in it, it is described by some literary critics as a "neo-slave narrative". I did consider why the book was written as a fantasy (or almost sf) instead of historical fiction, then I realised that it was probably done so the modern reader can experience the nineteenth century Maryland through the protagonist's contemporary eyes, this makes the book very visceral.
While the book was written to make the reader ponder some serious issues such as man's inhumanity to man, inequality and courage in an environment where you are made to feel worthless, at no point did I feel like being lectured to. The author knows the importance of communicating through the story, and I was completely swept away by it. Whatever I read next will likely suffer from being compared to this book. This goes in my all-time greats list.
Notes:
• From Tor.com: Octavia Butler Will Change the Way You Look at Genre Fiction.
• HERE is another reason to love Octavia Butler.
• Interesting background info from The Portalist:
Kindred was inspired by the time a very young Butler spent with her mother at work. Butler told In Motion Magazine in 2004 that a lot of the motivation behind her novel Kindred "came when I was in preschool, when my mother used to take me to work with her."
Kindred follows Dana, a writer who travels back in time to the antebellum South and meets her ancestors, a white plantation owner and a Black slave. The novel argues for the courageousness of people existing under unimaginable circumstances, as Dana makes compromises in order to survive slavery. Butler's own mother was a housemaid, and many of Butler's earliest memories were of the degradations her mother endured at work. She told In Motion that witnessing the racism her mother put up with in order to bring Butler a better life helped inspire much of Kindred's message:
"I got to see her not hearing insults and going in back doors, and even though I was a little kid, I realized it was humiliating. I knew something was wrong, it was unpleasant, it was bad. I remember saying to her a little later, at seven or eight, "I'll never do what you do, what you do is terrible." And she just got this sad look on her face and didn't say anything. I think it was the look and the memory of the indignities she endured. I just remembered that and wanted to convey that people who underwent all this were not cowards, were not people who were just too pathetic to protect themselves, but were heroes because they were using what they had to help their kids get a little further."
Excellent Kindred Infographic (with spoilers) click on image to see full size.
Kindred is about Dana, an African American woman who finds herself time travelling involuntarily to Maryland in the early nineteenth century. It is not explained how or why this happen to her, the mechanic of it is entirely irrelevant to the story. The novel is about her experience of slavery in the past. Her fate becomes intertwined with Rufus, a white ancestor who is the only son of a plantation owner and who somehow triggers her time traveling trips every time he is in mortal danger, a situation that arises more frequently to him than to most people. While there she experiences the woes of slavery first hand, including whipping, beating, degradation and humiliation.
This is a harrowing and emotional read, I almost cry manly tears during some of the chapters. I never pondered what it may have been like to be a slave, it is not exactly a contingency which is at all likely to ever arise. However, Ms Butler - genius that she was - made me feel it through the eyes of her protagonist. The pains and humiliation of slavery resonates with me even though there ought to be nothing to resonate. I kind of winced every time a stroke of a whip is described. This is not a comfortable read but highly engrossing and thought provoking. The book is very much character-centric, the relationship between Dana and Rufus is very complex and fascinating. Dana's husband Kevin who also become embroiled in time traveling and is marooned in the nineteenth century for years without his wife adds to her complications, his reaction to returning to the present time (1976) is entirely believable and again resonates strongly.
The book reminds me a little of Connie Willis's excellent Doomsday Book, which is about time travelling to the fourteenth century and also a harrowing (yet wonderful) read, though the emphasis of that book is on poverty, hardship and diseases rather than slavery. The involuntary time traveling aspect of the book reminds me of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, though Kindred predates it, and Kindred is certainly not a romantic book.
Octavia Butler was not one of those literary writers who try to avoid the science fiction label like the plague even while using sf tropes in their works, she has always loved sf and gladly embraced the genre (see photo below).
That said, Kindred is also not science fiction. The author described it as a "grim fantasy" and deliberately did not put any science in it, it is described by some literary critics as a "neo-slave narrative". I did consider why the book was written as a fantasy (or almost sf) instead of historical fiction, then I realised that it was probably done so the modern reader can experience the nineteenth century Maryland through the protagonist's contemporary eyes, this makes the book very visceral.
While the book was written to make the reader ponder some serious issues such as man's inhumanity to man, inequality and courage in an environment where you are made to feel worthless, at no point did I feel like being lectured to. The author knows the importance of communicating through the story, and I was completely swept away by it. Whatever I read next will likely suffer from being compared to this book. This goes in my all-time greats list.
Notes:
• From Tor.com: Octavia Butler Will Change the Way You Look at Genre Fiction.
• HERE is another reason to love Octavia Butler.
• Interesting background info from The Portalist:
Kindred was inspired by the time a very young Butler spent with her mother at work. Butler told In Motion Magazine in 2004 that a lot of the motivation behind her novel Kindred "came when I was in preschool, when my mother used to take me to work with her."
Kindred follows Dana, a writer who travels back in time to the antebellum South and meets her ancestors, a white plantation owner and a Black slave. The novel argues for the courageousness of people existing under unimaginable circumstances, as Dana makes compromises in order to survive slavery. Butler's own mother was a housemaid, and many of Butler's earliest memories were of the degradations her mother endured at work. She told In Motion that witnessing the racism her mother put up with in order to bring Butler a better life helped inspire much of Kindred's message:
"I got to see her not hearing insults and going in back doors, and even though I was a little kid, I realized it was humiliating. I knew something was wrong, it was unpleasant, it was bad. I remember saying to her a little later, at seven or eight, "I'll never do what you do, what you do is terrible." And she just got this sad look on her face and didn't say anything. I think it was the look and the memory of the indignities she endured. I just remembered that and wanted to convey that people who underwent all this were not cowards, were not people who were just too pathetic to protect themselves, but were heroes because they were using what they had to help their kids get a little further."
Excellent Kindred Infographic (with spoilers) click on image to see full size.
May 5, 2018
This should be required reading in high school. I feel like if teachers used material like this, students would be a lot more engaged. It’s a fascinating blend of genres and such an interesting perspective with which she examines slavery. Very immersive and horrifying, but it really humanizes the past. Would highly recommend and am eager to read more from Butler’s backlist.
March 27, 2024
Kindred, oh my fuck, where do I even start? Definitely one of my favorite reads from this year and definitely one of the most fucked up things I've ever read in my entire life. This book is not for the faint of heart. It is literally every Black person's literal nightmare. It will make you sick, it will make you think, it won't leave you. It will stay with you.
Kindred is the first-person account of a young African-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation, where she meets her ancestors: a proud Black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community and has to make many hard choices to survive – and to ensure her return to her present home!
Butler's debut novel explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century Black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. Through the two interracial couples who form the emotional core of the story, the novel also explores the intersection of power, gender, and race issues, and speculates on the prospects of future egalitarianism.
Butler portrays individual inhabitants of the plantation as distinctive people, giving each his or her own story. Robert Crossley argues that Butler treats the Blackness of her characters as "a matter of course", to resist the tendency of white writers to incorporate African Americans into their narratives just to illustrate a problem or to divorce themselves from charges of racism. Thus, in Kindred the enslaved community is depicted as a "rich human society": the proud yet victimized free-turned-enslaved Alice; Sam who has to work on the fields and hopes Dana will teach his brother how to read and write; the traitorous sewing woman Liza, who frustrates Dana's escape; the bright and resourceful Nigel, Rufus's childhood friend who learns to read from a stolen primer; most importantly, Sarah the cook, who Butler transforms from an image of the submissive, happy "mammie" of white fiction to a deeply angry yet caring woman subdued only by the threat of losing her last child, the mute Carrie.
But Butler doesn't just excel at writing Black characters, her white characters are just as well-written and interesting. The enslaver Rufus and his father Tom Weylin are easy to loathe and hate, yet Butler hammers home that they are human, they're not monsters: "He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper."
One of the most interesting (and heartbreaking) relationships in the book is between Rufus and Alice. While Rufus seems to hold all the power in his relationship with Alice, she never wholly surrenders to him. Alice's suicide at the end can be read as her way of ending her struggle with Rufus with a final upsetting of their power balance, an escape through death, as something that he can't take away from her. It's a bleak interpretation but a fitting one, taking into consideration that an enslaved woman like Alice held no power except for the one over her own death.
Keeping Butler's other work in mind, it's also interesting that he bond between Dana and Rufus can be interpreted as a symbiotic relationship between enslaver and enslaved: they are continually forced to collaborate in order to survive. In a fucked up way, they are dependent on each other. A fact that is seen in Dana's feelings towards her enslaver-ancestor: in addition to fear and contempt, there is affection from familiarity and the occasional kindnesses. The novel often made me uncomfortable because I felt like Dana had to much empathy for/with Rufus. Not gonna lie, I hated the guy from the first time we meet him to the last. But Dana has patience with him, even forgives him many times when he hurts her... the only thing she cannot forgive is when he hurts other people.
In several interviews, Butler has mentioned that she wrote Kindred to counteract stereotypical conceptions of the submissiveness of enslaved people. While studying at Pasadena City College, Butler heard a young man from the Black Power Movement express his contempt for older generations of African-Americans for what he considered their shameful submission to white power. Butler realized the young man did not have enough context to understand the necessity to accept abuse just to keep oneself and one's family alive and well.
Kindred reveals the repressed trauma slavery caused in America's collective memory of history. In an interview on 1985, Butler suggested that this trauma partly comes from attempts to forget America's dark past: "I think most people don’t know or don’t realize that at least 10 million blacks were killed just on the way to this country, just during the middle passage....They don’t really want to hear it partly because it makes whites feel guilty."
In a later interview with Randall Kenan, Butler explained how debilitating this trauma has been for Americans, especially for African Americans, as symbolized by the loss of her protagonist's left arm: "I couldn’t really let [Dana] come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and [losing her arm], I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole." Many academics have extended Dana's loss as a metaphor for the "lasting damage of slavery on the African American psyche".
"There’s worse things than being dead."Written in 1979, Kindred remains Octavia E. Butler's most popular work until date. It is a common choice for high school and college courses as well as book clubs and reading programs. And I sure see why. This novel begs to be discussed in a group, preferably in a safe space (which schools and colleges can't always provide, unfortunately), but this books opens up so many important topics, interesting questions, moral dilemmas ... I'm actually saddened that my reading experience was a solitary one. When I reread it (and I sure will in the future), I'll definitely pick a reading buddy!
Kindred is the first-person account of a young African-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation, where she meets her ancestors: a proud Black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community and has to make many hard choices to survive – and to ensure her return to her present home!
Butler's debut novel explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century Black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. Through the two interracial couples who form the emotional core of the story, the novel also explores the intersection of power, gender, and race issues, and speculates on the prospects of future egalitarianism.
"I don’t have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don’t feel safe anymore."Butler explores how a modern Black woman would experience the time of slavery. During an interview, Butler admitted that while reading slave narratives for background, she realized that if she wanted people to read her book, she would have to present a less violent version of slavery. Still, Kindred is not for the faint of heart, and Butler's depictions of slavery and the violence (especially sexual violence towards Black women) that goes along with it was hard to stomach at times. Her descriptions are vivid and feel authentic. As a reader, you are transported alongside Dana to tje life on an Eastern Shore plantation pre-Civil War.
Butler portrays individual inhabitants of the plantation as distinctive people, giving each his or her own story. Robert Crossley argues that Butler treats the Blackness of her characters as "a matter of course", to resist the tendency of white writers to incorporate African Americans into their narratives just to illustrate a problem or to divorce themselves from charges of racism. Thus, in Kindred the enslaved community is depicted as a "rich human society": the proud yet victimized free-turned-enslaved Alice; Sam who has to work on the fields and hopes Dana will teach his brother how to read and write; the traitorous sewing woman Liza, who frustrates Dana's escape; the bright and resourceful Nigel, Rufus's childhood friend who learns to read from a stolen primer; most importantly, Sarah the cook, who Butler transforms from an image of the submissive, happy "mammie" of white fiction to a deeply angry yet caring woman subdued only by the threat of losing her last child, the mute Carrie.
But Butler doesn't just excel at writing Black characters, her white characters are just as well-written and interesting. The enslaver Rufus and his father Tom Weylin are easy to loathe and hate, yet Butler hammers home that they are human, they're not monsters: "He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper."
One of the most interesting (and heartbreaking) relationships in the book is between Rufus and Alice. While Rufus seems to hold all the power in his relationship with Alice, she never wholly surrenders to him. Alice's suicide at the end can be read as her way of ending her struggle with Rufus with a final upsetting of their power balance, an escape through death, as something that he can't take away from her. It's a bleak interpretation but a fitting one, taking into consideration that an enslaved woman like Alice held no power except for the one over her own death.
"I can’t advise you. It’s your body."Kindred portrays the exploitation of Black female sexuality as a main site of the historic struggle between master and slave. Diana Paulin describes Rufus's attempts to control Alice's sexuality as a means to recapture power he lost when she chose Isaac as her sexual partner. Compelled to submit her body to Rufus, Alice divorces her desire from her sexuality to preserve a sense of self. Similarly, Dana's time traveling reconstructs her sexuality to fit the times. While in the present, Dana chooses her husband and enjoys sex with him; in the past, her status as a Black female forced her to subordinate her body to the desires of the master for pleasure, breeding, and as sexual property. Thus, as Rufus grows into adulthood, he attempts to control Dana's sexuality, ending with his attempt at rape to turn her into a replacement of Alice. Since Dana sees sexual domination as the ultimate form of subordination, her killing of Rufus is the way she rejects the role of female slave, distinguishing herself from those who did not have the power to say "no."
"Not mine." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. "Not mine, his, He paid for it, didn’t he?"
Keeping Butler's other work in mind, it's also interesting that he bond between Dana and Rufus can be interpreted as a symbiotic relationship between enslaver and enslaved: they are continually forced to collaborate in order to survive. In a fucked up way, they are dependent on each other. A fact that is seen in Dana's feelings towards her enslaver-ancestor: in addition to fear and contempt, there is affection from familiarity and the occasional kindnesses. The novel often made me uncomfortable because I felt like Dana had to much empathy for/with Rufus. Not gonna lie, I hated the guy from the first time we meet him to the last. But Dana has patience with him, even forgives him many times when he hurts her... the only thing she cannot forgive is when he hurts other people.
In several interviews, Butler has mentioned that she wrote Kindred to counteract stereotypical conceptions of the submissiveness of enslaved people. While studying at Pasadena City College, Butler heard a young man from the Black Power Movement express his contempt for older generations of African-Americans for what he considered their shameful submission to white power. Butler realized the young man did not have enough context to understand the necessity to accept abuse just to keep oneself and one's family alive and well.
"I'm not property, Kevin. I'm not a horse or a sack of wheat. If I have to seem to be property, if I have to accept limits on my freedom for Rufus's sake, then he also has to accept limits - on his behavior toward me. He has to leave me enough control of my own life to make living look better to me than killing and dying.”Thus, Butler resolved to create a modern African-American character, who would go back in time to see how well he (Butler's protagonist was originally male) could withstand the abuses his ancestors had suffered. Therefore, Dana's memories of her enslavement, as Ashraf A. Rushdy explains, become a record of the "unwritten history" of African-Americans, a "recovery of a coherent story explaining Dana's various losses." By living these memories, Dana is enabled to make the connections between slavery and current social situations, including the exploitation of blue-collar workers, police violence, rape, domestic abuse, and segregation.
"If your black ancestors had felt that way, you wouldn't be here," said Kevin.
"I told you when all this started that I didn't have their endurance. I still don't. Some of them will go on struggling to survive, no matter what. I'm not like that."
Kindred reveals the repressed trauma slavery caused in America's collective memory of history. In an interview on 1985, Butler suggested that this trauma partly comes from attempts to forget America's dark past: "I think most people don’t know or don’t realize that at least 10 million blacks were killed just on the way to this country, just during the middle passage....They don’t really want to hear it partly because it makes whites feel guilty."
In a later interview with Randall Kenan, Butler explained how debilitating this trauma has been for Americans, especially for African Americans, as symbolized by the loss of her protagonist's left arm: "I couldn’t really let [Dana] come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and [losing her arm], I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole." Many academics have extended Dana's loss as a metaphor for the "lasting damage of slavery on the African American psyche".
December 11, 2011
I wanted to love this book. But it has many flaws. I'll get to that in a few, but first, let me gush about what's great about it.
The plot/premise is brilliant. I love the idea of a modern black woman being propelled back into time to help one of her white ancestors to survive, even if he becomes a mean and despicable slave master. I love the fact that it used time travel, which I usually hate, but found tolerable here. I love the observations of the protagonist, Dana. She's an interesting character, with a lot of strength, and some flaws that I found believable.
The book is easy to read, but perhaps that's where I start my critique. It sometimes over simplifies in an effort to push through the story. There was a lot of opportunity for complexity, and the author sorta takes the easy way out in many instances. Also, it feels a little dumbed down at times, and the author tries too hard to explain some things, and it comes off as contrived. In other instances, though, she doesn't explain enough, like why Dana is traveling through time in the first place.
Overall though, it's a really ambitious and brilliant concept, and a fascinating read. We need more African-American novels that use paranormal elements to explore socio-historical issues. I applaud Octavia Butler for taking the risk and pulling it off, mostly.
The plot/premise is brilliant. I love the idea of a modern black woman being propelled back into time to help one of her white ancestors to survive, even if he becomes a mean and despicable slave master. I love the fact that it used time travel, which I usually hate, but found tolerable here. I love the observations of the protagonist, Dana. She's an interesting character, with a lot of strength, and some flaws that I found believable.
The book is easy to read, but perhaps that's where I start my critique. It sometimes over simplifies in an effort to push through the story. There was a lot of opportunity for complexity, and the author sorta takes the easy way out in many instances. Also, it feels a little dumbed down at times, and the author tries too hard to explain some things, and it comes off as contrived. In other instances, though, she doesn't explain enough, like why Dana is traveling through time in the first place.
Overall though, it's a really ambitious and brilliant concept, and a fascinating read. We need more African-American novels that use paranormal elements to explore socio-historical issues. I applaud Octavia Butler for taking the risk and pulling it off, mostly.
June 4, 2022
Butler published this novel in 1979, and despite it becoming a bestseller and being the first black woman to write a science fiction novel, it inexplicitly won no awards. However, it has remained popular since it’s release and Author Octavia E. Butler did go on to win the Hugo and Locus Awards for other works and was the first science fiction writer to be awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. I highly recommend reading this book anytime, but especially during Black History Month. I will also warn that it is an emotionally devastating story.
'Kindred' follows Dana Franklin, a modern day 26-year-old female black writer, through a series of time travel episodes that pull her into a pre-Civil War plantation located in Maryland. While the novel is horrifying, dealing with whippings, suicide, rape, and slavery sales that separate families, I read that Butler decided to lessen the violence and brutality that she read in historical accounts, to allow the story to be more approachable – a shuddering revelation.
What intrigued me right away, is that Butler could have written a straight-up powerful critic of American history and the continuing issues of racism and bigotry. But she chose to dive deeper, by having Dana be married to a white husband in her modern life. In addition, Dana is intricately connected to an ancestor, Rufus - the white son of the plantation slave owner. Rufus has a dysfunctional attraction to a black woman who was born free but enslaved for attempting to help her slave husband to escape north. Dana knows that Alice must give birth to a daughter by Rufus to allow Dana to exist in the future. But it’s these complex interracial relationships that allow Butler to investigate all types of subtleties of theme. The resulting exploration of power dynamics, guilt, and trauma make the book a much more effective examination of sexism, bigotry, and racism and its wake and allows it to be a powerful lesson for today’s issues.
A well-told, emotionally difficult, but necessary read. Butler’s tale is science fiction at it’s best, using the improbable to expose and magnify humanities’ past atrocities and reveal why learning from that past is even more important today. Five stars.
'Kindred' follows Dana Franklin, a modern day 26-year-old female black writer, through a series of time travel episodes that pull her into a pre-Civil War plantation located in Maryland. While the novel is horrifying, dealing with whippings, suicide, rape, and slavery sales that separate families, I read that Butler decided to lessen the violence and brutality that she read in historical accounts, to allow the story to be more approachable – a shuddering revelation.
What intrigued me right away, is that Butler could have written a straight-up powerful critic of American history and the continuing issues of racism and bigotry. But she chose to dive deeper, by having Dana be married to a white husband in her modern life. In addition, Dana is intricately connected to an ancestor, Rufus - the white son of the plantation slave owner. Rufus has a dysfunctional attraction to a black woman who was born free but enslaved for attempting to help her slave husband to escape north. Dana knows that Alice must give birth to a daughter by Rufus to allow Dana to exist in the future. But it’s these complex interracial relationships that allow Butler to investigate all types of subtleties of theme. The resulting exploration of power dynamics, guilt, and trauma make the book a much more effective examination of sexism, bigotry, and racism and its wake and allows it to be a powerful lesson for today’s issues.
A well-told, emotionally difficult, but necessary read. Butler’s tale is science fiction at it’s best, using the improbable to expose and magnify humanities’ past atrocities and reveal why learning from that past is even more important today. Five stars.
January 20, 2020
Audiobook/sync/ebook
Voice narrator Kim Staunton was outstanding....
Absolutely fantastic!
At times I felt like I was watching a movie.... and Staunton had a lot to do with the ‘movie-feeling’ experience. She demanded my attention- I even stood taller while soaking in our warm water pool.
The time travel/fantasy/historical fiction blend worked beautifully... kept me interested.
Dana Franklin is a strong protagonist - a black woman married to a white man during the 70’s.
Each time she is thrown back in time she has to grapple with the devastation-slavery-era - vs. remembering who she is: a free woman/born free.
Oh my - the children and messages in this book are priceless.
The creative crafty storytelling, .....
with so much -WRONGNESS - INJUSTICE & DISPARITY had me thinking - as in ‘living’ -in both- the past and present world.
This was my first book by Octavia Butler....( sad to know she is no longer alive)...
What a beautiful passionate writer she was.
I’ve own this book for years ...
It was seeing the movie - “Just Mercy” recently- adapted from the incredible book by Bryan Stevenson -
And....
connecting with author *Hana Ali*,
whom I had the privilege of sharing with recently as well....
who told me ‘Kim Staunton’...(voice narrator of ‘her’ memoir):
“At Home with Muhammad Ali”. ( a book I’ve not read ‘yet’ but look forward to).....
that inspired me to choose “Kindred”....
To experience both Octavia & Kim
I certainly waited long enough to read this ‘classic’( ?/!), book.
and......
SO MUCH BETTER than I expected. (as I often tend to shy away from words like sci-fi, fantasy, and time travel)...
But honestly>> there was absolutely nothing to worry about -
I would’ve missed a wonderful story and introduction to an author I had not read.
Blessings & Thanks...to all the readers of this book who came before me.
Voice narrator Kim Staunton was outstanding....
Absolutely fantastic!
At times I felt like I was watching a movie.... and Staunton had a lot to do with the ‘movie-feeling’ experience. She demanded my attention- I even stood taller while soaking in our warm water pool.
The time travel/fantasy/historical fiction blend worked beautifully... kept me interested.
Dana Franklin is a strong protagonist - a black woman married to a white man during the 70’s.
Each time she is thrown back in time she has to grapple with the devastation-slavery-era - vs. remembering who she is: a free woman/born free.
Oh my - the children and messages in this book are priceless.
The creative crafty storytelling, .....
with so much -WRONGNESS - INJUSTICE & DISPARITY had me thinking - as in ‘living’ -in both- the past and present world.
This was my first book by Octavia Butler....( sad to know she is no longer alive)...
What a beautiful passionate writer she was.
I’ve own this book for years ...
It was seeing the movie - “Just Mercy” recently- adapted from the incredible book by Bryan Stevenson -
And....
connecting with author *Hana Ali*,
whom I had the privilege of sharing with recently as well....
who told me ‘Kim Staunton’...(voice narrator of ‘her’ memoir):
“At Home with Muhammad Ali”. ( a book I’ve not read ‘yet’ but look forward to).....
that inspired me to choose “Kindred”....
To experience both Octavia & Kim
I certainly waited long enough to read this ‘classic’( ?/!), book.
and......
SO MUCH BETTER than I expected. (as I often tend to shy away from words like sci-fi, fantasy, and time travel)...
But honestly>> there was absolutely nothing to worry about -
I would’ve missed a wonderful story and introduction to an author I had not read.
Blessings & Thanks...to all the readers of this book who came before me.
July 5, 2020
Primera lectura para el #BlackHistoryJuly y me ha encantado.
Me ha sorprendido muchísimo lo ágil que es la lectura, lo rápido que te adentras en la historia y te engancha, pero en ningún momento se vuelve una lectura "fácil".
'Parentesco' nos presenta a Dana, una escritora afroamericana en plenos años 70que de manera completamente inexplicable y sin poder ella controlarlo comienza a viajar al pasado, hasta el siglo XIX en plena época de esclavitud. Comienza a tener trato tanto con blancos como con los esclavos negros y a implicarse en la vida de estas personas tratando de entender por qué está allí y qué debe hacer para volver a su tiempo.
El libro nos muestra con una faceta totalmente diferente la esclavitud al verlo a través de la mirada de una mujer "actual" (o al menos actual era cuando se publicó la novela). Es sorprendente y aterrador (como los propios protagonistas comentan) lo rápido que el ser humano puede adaptarse a las situaciones más terribles y denigrantes... el libro está plagado de esto, de momentos duros y terribles, pero no cae en lo fácil y trata a todos los personajes como personas complejas y creíbles, hijas de su tiempo.
La crítica no escapa tampoco a la época actual, confrontada con la de la esclavitud, a pesar de todo, Dana sigue teniendo que enfrentarse al desagrado de sus familiares por su matrimonio con un hombre blanco. Me hubiera gustado saber más de Kevin, es un personaje que me tuvo todo el libro con la incógnita, en ocasiones parecía la persona más comprensiva del mundo (dadas las circunstancias) y en otras su relación demostraba el machismo de la época.
Sea como sea, me ha parecido una gran lectura, de esas que te atrapan de principio a fin y que no se olvidan.
Me ha sorprendido muchísimo lo ágil que es la lectura, lo rápido que te adentras en la historia y te engancha, pero en ningún momento se vuelve una lectura "fácil".
'Parentesco' nos presenta a Dana, una escritora afroamericana en plenos años 70que de manera completamente inexplicable y sin poder ella controlarlo comienza a viajar al pasado, hasta el siglo XIX en plena época de esclavitud. Comienza a tener trato tanto con blancos como con los esclavos negros y a implicarse en la vida de estas personas tratando de entender por qué está allí y qué debe hacer para volver a su tiempo.
El libro nos muestra con una faceta totalmente diferente la esclavitud al verlo a través de la mirada de una mujer "actual" (o al menos actual era cuando se publicó la novela). Es sorprendente y aterrador (como los propios protagonistas comentan) lo rápido que el ser humano puede adaptarse a las situaciones más terribles y denigrantes... el libro está plagado de esto, de momentos duros y terribles, pero no cae en lo fácil y trata a todos los personajes como personas complejas y creíbles, hijas de su tiempo.
La crítica no escapa tampoco a la época actual, confrontada con la de la esclavitud, a pesar de todo, Dana sigue teniendo que enfrentarse al desagrado de sus familiares por su matrimonio con un hombre blanco. Me hubiera gustado saber más de Kevin, es un personaje que me tuvo todo el libro con la incógnita, en ocasiones parecía la persona más comprensiva del mundo (dadas las circunstancias) y en otras su relación demostraba el machismo de la época.
Sea como sea, me ha parecido una gran lectura, de esas que te atrapan de principio a fin y que no se olvidan.
January 3, 2023
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I have had this book on my to-be-read shelf for nine years. It was the release of the Hulu series that encouraged me to read it now. I always have to read the book before I watch the TV show or movie as I like to go into a book knowing very little and let my imagination do the thinking for me. I am kicking myself for waiting so long to read this. Science Fiction or Fantasy is not really my thing but I love historical fiction and had heard many great things about this book. They weren't wrong and I was so pleasantly surprised. I also promised myself last year that I would think a little more outside the box, and my usual genres. Am I ever glad I did as I was rewarded with an amazing adventure.
What an excellent way to start my reading year, a five-star read! I managed this one in a couple of sittings as I was engrossed in the simplistic writing style and the way the characters were all both good and evil, it made them well-rounded and true to life. I was enamoured with the way the varying relationships were written as well as the dialogue. Butler is a master of the genre and I cannot wait to read her other works. All. The. Stars.
I have had this book on my to-be-read shelf for nine years. It was the release of the Hulu series that encouraged me to read it now. I always have to read the book before I watch the TV show or movie as I like to go into a book knowing very little and let my imagination do the thinking for me. I am kicking myself for waiting so long to read this. Science Fiction or Fantasy is not really my thing but I love historical fiction and had heard many great things about this book. They weren't wrong and I was so pleasantly surprised. I also promised myself last year that I would think a little more outside the box, and my usual genres. Am I ever glad I did as I was rewarded with an amazing adventure.
What an excellent way to start my reading year, a five-star read! I managed this one in a couple of sittings as I was engrossed in the simplistic writing style and the way the characters were all both good and evil, it made them well-rounded and true to life. I was enamoured with the way the varying relationships were written as well as the dialogue. Butler is a master of the genre and I cannot wait to read her other works. All. The. Stars.
February 15, 2021
I remember the astonished fear I felt when I read Primo Levi in High-school and realized how easily one can go along with dehumanization in order to save his life. As much as we humans like hiding behind false truths, we're merely trying to go easy on ourselves and to maintain our breakable feeling of control. We don't control shit. From the moment I read Holocaust accounts, I've met a lot of people assuring me that these days wouldn't ever happen again because people would fight harder and longer. Ha. This fallacious argument first forgets that it already happened again, and secondly it dismisses way too quickly how readily people accept awful behaviors if they become the norm. We can hate ourselves for that, but I'm not sure what we're trying to achieve when we forget that. There will always be people who fight, but they'll often be fewer than those who silently accept or participates in the dehumanization. Now how can we change that is the real question.
“The ease. Us, the children... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
This is what makes Kindred both so interesting and horrifying : Dana, a 25 years old black woman, is transported from 1976 to 1815 whenever her ancestor - Rufus - needs her to stay alive, straight into the plantation his father runs. What follows is an unflinching and very important look at what slavery really was and how its mechanisms worked, without, for once (thank you thank you), an ounce of romanticization, but rather a complex but unforgiving portrayal of what many books would sell out as a Good Master (ugh). This is what the world needs. I often mention my students in my reviews, but honestly, it's because I often feel that we ask more of children than we do of fucking adults. At ten, they're able to understand that their intend doesn't mean anything if they hurt someone : they still have to be held accountable. The world needs to hear that as white people, we might not intend to comfort and sustain white supremacy, yet every time we buy into some romanticized version of slavery, we do. A slaver who falls in love with one of his slaves is still very much a monster in my book. So, what? The guy has feelings? SO WHAT? He'll still buy and sell people as if they were furniture. He'll still make them work, hurt them, for his sole gain. What Kindred shows the reader is that no matter how easily we could feel sorry for said slaver - as Dana sometimes does - it doesn't change a thing. It should never change a thing.
“Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense.”
Served with a compelling and frightening plot, Kindred won't let you look away and will capture your all being until the very last page - if that's not the mark of great books, what is? This novel is absolutely terrifying and it doesn't need any zombies to be : people are the monsters. White people are, and the fact that it actually happened in history makes it even more chilling. More, if we look at History as a whole, slavery has stopped in the US such a short time ago. And if Kindred reminds us of something that we should have never forgotten, it's how easily we come to adapt to - or make the best of, how horrible that can sound - such an horrendous system. In the end, we humans want to live. This ongoing thirst might make us able to do great things, but it also makes it harder for us to fight.
“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of “wrong” ideas.”
I wish this novel would be more famous worldwide, because if it's apparently studied in High-school in the US, I had never heard of it before last year - as I found, it was translated into French in the 2000s but by such an unknown publisher, it's a shame. When are we starting to translate - and promote - these important books rather than the last NA by Colleen Hoover? Really? As the first science-fiction novel published by a black woman, and as a fucking amazing book that will linger in my mind for so long, because I'm neither able to forget these complex and fascinating characters nor the message they carry, I'd say the world should wake the fuck up and read this book. Now.
TW - Slavery, Rape & Attempted Rape, Graphic Violence, Use of several ableist slurs (crazy, retarded)
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March 4, 2023
“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.”
I enjoyed Octavia Butler's Kindred, but it might disappoint those who are expecting what is billed as science fiction. Most of Butler's other work is both fantastic and unabashedly science fiction.
Despite writing a novel, Kindred, based on time travel, Butler never addresses the mechanics of this time travel or whether perhaps there is something about the protagonist, Dana Franklin, which triggers it. Instead, Butler relies on establishing a bond between Dana and the boy she rescues the first time she is thrust into the past. This does not detract at all from the emotional impact of the novel; Butler understands how to tell a compelling story. Subsequent trips back into the past reveal the bond between the two and why Dana needs to save and protect him.
“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”
“That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”
I enjoyed Octavia Butler's Kindred, but it might disappoint those who are expecting what is billed as science fiction. Most of Butler's other work is both fantastic and unabashedly science fiction.
Despite writing a novel, Kindred, based on time travel, Butler never addresses the mechanics of this time travel or whether perhaps there is something about the protagonist, Dana Franklin, which triggers it. Instead, Butler relies on establishing a bond between Dana and the boy she rescues the first time she is thrust into the past. This does not detract at all from the emotional impact of the novel; Butler understands how to tell a compelling story. Subsequent trips back into the past reveal the bond between the two and why Dana needs to save and protect him.
“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”
“That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”
December 19, 2016
Before Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, there was Kindred, a grueling plunge into American slavery with a fantastic twist. One of the great time travel novels, right there with Time and Again and 11/22/63. Aspects of the narrative might be too agonizing for the tender at heart, but I was with it all the way, from first sentence to last.
December 13, 2022
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There are a lot of books that talk about the antebellum south, especially in romance novels where it is a popular setting, but few seem to capture the sheer unfairness of what it must have been like as a non-white person living in the South in the nineteenth century. I love Octavia Butler's science fiction, but KINDRED is a book that I purposely put off reading because I'd heard it was brutal. Good, but brutal, and utterly unflinching in the portrayal of that brutality.
Dana is a black woman living in the 1970s. Her husband, Kevin, is white, and both their families disapprove of that union, even in the twentieth century. Things are pretty good for Dana, though; she has a decent job, a husband who loves her, and her own house filled with books. All that changes when one day, without explanation, she's plunged into the past to save a white relative from death.
Rufus is the son of a plantation owner, and one of her relatives, the Weylins, although her family history is so occluded that until now, she never realized he was white. There's a bond connecting them, tightening whenever Rufus is about to die - and the only way that Dana is able to return to her own time is when her own life is threatened. Some people have said that this reminded them of OUTLANDER, and that's true: the time-travel is just as sketchy and mysterious, and neither shrink back from cruelty and rape.
What makes KINDRED such an interesting book is the complex way that Butler portrays slavery. She makes so much social commentary about both the twentieth century and the nineteenth century, and despite being published about forty years ago, it still feels fresh and modern. Dana struggles with slavery as a modern woman, and yet even she realizes how sinister a trap it is: when you have no rights, any concession feels like a blessing, to the point where you may start to feel affection for someone just treating you like a human being. She experiences something akin to Stockholm syndrome, and sees firsthand how some of her peers struggle and are oppressed by those same societal constraints.
KINDRED is not an easy read. There is rape, and torture, and cruelty of all colors. The N-word is bandied around a lot (because this is the South in the nineteenth century, and it would not be realistic otherwise). I think many readers, white readers especially, will probably be shocked at the no-holds barred approach, especially if they're accustomed to the version of history that sugar-coats the antebellum period and has slaves and black servants being adored and treated like family. Dana herself has a similar moment of disillusionment when she is researching the period and picks up a copy of GONE WITH THE WIND, only to put it down in disgust.
The fact of the matter is, slavery happened. It happened and it was awful, and it happened. But it's important to know that it happened, and what it was like; it's important to know that real human beings suffered at the hands of other human beings, and were made to feel different based on where they came from and the color of their skin; it's important to know that injustice is a real and painful thing that is mired in our shared history and continues to be perpetuated to this day.
It's important to know that, so we remember why we must never go back; and why we must do our best going forward to work towards a future of true equality. We still have a ways to go.
4.5 stars
May 23, 2019
Kindred is a hybrid novel, difficult to categorize. Partly science-fiction, partly historical novel, it addresses race, gender and class issues in the context of slavery but, and this is the complexity of this book, in two timelines, antebellum Maryland and modern California.
Butler, far from trying to make sense of time travel and how it suddenly affects the protagonist of the story, uses the sci-fi device to transport a free Afro-American woman to a colonial plantation near Baltimore to explore human resilience when confronted with the vexation, humiliation and manifold forms of abuse, physical and psychological, of treating human beings as property to be used, misused and trafficked with.
I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the time travel episodes but I will confess I was instantly pulled into the story. Dana, the narrator, and maybe even the author’s alter ego, challenges the reader to get to grips with the cruel reality of slaves, of their everyday life and their will to survive mainly with the sole idea of protecting their endangered families from the masters’ whims and vicious “rights”. The artifice of time travel serves the purpose of making historical barbarity a tangible and constant threat and to better understand the huge amount of silent courage required of those oppressed to endure all sorts of inhuman punishments.
Butler’s prose is rather unadorned and definitely plot-driven, but she is very accurate in recreating the social mechanisms that enabled slavery in the Southern States; the violence, the helplessness and the loss of whatever self-dignity might be left to those born into captivity. The effects of racial bigotry and subjugation on the making of identity are clearly delineated and open a debate on the reader’s mind. Progress has been made since the days of legal enslavement, of course, but is it enough?
Books like this one remind us that we should never lose that silent courage, that will to survive in order to fight injustice and oppression, if only, to pay back the huge sacrifices that our ancestors made so that we could exist, so that we could be here, living a relatively comfortable life, now, today, and hopefully, a life that will be fairer when our children fight their own battles in the future.
Butler, far from trying to make sense of time travel and how it suddenly affects the protagonist of the story, uses the sci-fi device to transport a free Afro-American woman to a colonial plantation near Baltimore to explore human resilience when confronted with the vexation, humiliation and manifold forms of abuse, physical and psychological, of treating human beings as property to be used, misused and trafficked with.
I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the time travel episodes but I will confess I was instantly pulled into the story. Dana, the narrator, and maybe even the author’s alter ego, challenges the reader to get to grips with the cruel reality of slaves, of their everyday life and their will to survive mainly with the sole idea of protecting their endangered families from the masters’ whims and vicious “rights”. The artifice of time travel serves the purpose of making historical barbarity a tangible and constant threat and to better understand the huge amount of silent courage required of those oppressed to endure all sorts of inhuman punishments.
Butler’s prose is rather unadorned and definitely plot-driven, but she is very accurate in recreating the social mechanisms that enabled slavery in the Southern States; the violence, the helplessness and the loss of whatever self-dignity might be left to those born into captivity. The effects of racial bigotry and subjugation on the making of identity are clearly delineated and open a debate on the reader’s mind. Progress has been made since the days of legal enslavement, of course, but is it enough?
Books like this one remind us that we should never lose that silent courage, that will to survive in order to fight injustice and oppression, if only, to pay back the huge sacrifices that our ancestors made so that we could exist, so that we could be here, living a relatively comfortable life, now, today, and hopefully, a life that will be fairer when our children fight their own battles in the future.
September 7, 2022
A work of complete and startling genius. I was spellbound from the first page to the last!
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