Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

Paperback, 2003

Status

Checked out

Publication

Beacon Press (2004), 264 pages

Description

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth 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 across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time Dana's sojourns become longer and more dangerous, until it is uncertain whether or not her life will end, long before it has even begun.

User reviews

LibraryThing member JanetinLondon
Dana, a woman living in California in the 1970’s (when the book was written), has some sort of fainting fit and wakes up in a woods, where she sees a boy drowning in a river and she saves him, before another fit returns her home. Soon afterwards, the pattern is repeated – faint, save the boy
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(the same boy, but now older, and a different threat), go home, and then it happens again. She gradually realizes she has some sort of spiritual link with him – she is a sort of “fairy godmother”, who saves him from death repeatedly during his youth. This is all very well, except that Dana is black, and the boy, Rufus, is the son of a slave-owning white family in pre-Civil War Maryland.

Rufus’ family recognize her magical role in his life, but still, she is black and therefore they do see her as a slave. They try to keep her with them, to protect him better and also to work for them. Dana can’t control her transitions between the two worlds, so she has no choice but to live as a slave when she is in 19th Century Maryland, as she certainly can’t go wandering around, without any papers or other proof that she is anything but a runaway slave. She doesn’t know how long she will be there on any given visit, so she has to make the best of it.

By the device of having Dana’s visits set years apart (although they seem only days or weeks apart in 1970’s time), we see how life develops on the plantation – the slave children she meets on early visits grow up, marry, have children, or are less lucky and are sold away from loved ones, or try to run away (usually unsuccessfully). Rufus develops from a boy who behaves reasonably decently towards black people (including Dana, of course, who tries to encourage his better behaviour) into a man who is as callous, selfish and brutal as his father was before him. There’s also a side plot involving Dana’s modern day husband, Kevin, who is white, and who has accidentally accompanied her to Maryland as he was holding on to her when she time-shifted. They get separated; he winds up staying there much longer than she does, and is changed by his experience of being a white man in that time, and one who is against slavery.

It’s a good story – I was always interested to see how things had changed each time she went back, and how she would cope, even though it was all pretty depressing. The ending also made sense, providing closure to the story. It’s a fairly quick read, and I think pretty much anyone would enjoy it.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
BkC10) KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler: Excellent!!

I still agree with myself. And what better review for Valentine's Day than this time-travel novel in which a modern-day African-American woman is summoned by her slave-owning ancestor to rescue him at critical moments, and then must pimp her slave
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ancestress to the slave owner to ensure that she is born?

The Book Report: Kinda spoilered that above, and there's the basic plot in a nutshell...time travel, ownership of humans, personal morality versus survival versus the endless mutability of human emotion. You know, the Big Questions.

My Review: Oh my heck. Modern African American, circa 1976, makes her way in the slave society of 1815, and all that that entails. It's not an easy, fluffy read, but it's amazing how Butler pulls no punches and still manages to keep the easy, smug path of good = noble, bad = horrible, from making her characters into masks capable of expressing only one emotion. I liked reading the book because it pulls no punches, and it left me breathless at frequent intervals with its complete willingness to engage all, each, every, facet of human love.

Octavia Butler, gone too soon, wrote this meditation on survival when she was abour thirty. What a feat that is. So young, and so sharply critical of denial and misdirection...so ready to face up to the underlying motivations and the foundational lies of each and every character's identity...what she must have been like as a friend! Her insights would be Buddha-like, if they were anything like the honest and unsparing insights she used in creating this book.

Beautiful, hard, fiery. Like a diamond, it will cut anything you can show it.
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LibraryThing member beserene
Octavia Butler was one of the most extraordinary speculative fiction writers of the twentieth century. Virtually every book she wrote is powerful, poetic, rich in detail and elegant in craftsmanship. None more so, however, than this one. 'Kindred' may, in fact, be her most mainstream book. Its
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speculative element is an unexplained time travel pattern, one that is simply there, not rationalized or categorized or mechanized. And that allows the reader to focus on what this novel really is -- a neo-slave narrative, an eloquent perspective on African American history, and an incredibly personal reflection on how experiences -- especially traumatic experiences -- shape us as individuals and as a culture.

The main character in the novel, Dana, is a modern black woman in 1976 (the novel was published originally in 1979) who is "called" back to the early 1800s by a distant ancestor, a white southern plantation owner, in order to save his life. In the process of doing so, Dana is subject to the horrors of slavery in the antebellum South. Thus, in this first person narrative, the reader is also faced with those horrors. It is not an easy thing to face, but the most remarkable thing about this novel is its unflinching attention, which draws the reader into this world without making her feel obligated, or (remarkably) preached at. The extraordinary experiences offered up to the reader are quietly internalized; the message is taken in without conscious consideration.

It is only in the pauses, or after one has finished, that the reflection inspired by the novel begins. Whilst reading, I could not stop to think -- I felt, I absorbed, I wondered... I had to know what would happen to Dana, to her husband, to her world. But when I was done, I really started to think. I considered how different such an experience would be for me. I thought about the historical and linguistic patterns that Butler points out in the novel. I reflected on how far we have come, and how far we haven't. And therein is the pure intellectual beauty that is an Octavia Butler novel -- never once have I finished a work of hers without something to think seriously about. Butler is not the one you choose when you are looking for a little light reading, but she is absolutely the first place to go when one wants to take a new look at an old conflict, when one wants to consider culture in a different way, when one wants to think and be challenged.

I don't think there is any better recommendation for her work than that. Read it.
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LibraryThing member booksofcolor
Utterly blew me away. I don't have the words for the effect it had; I read the whole thing slack-jawed in one go. And then over, to make sure I hadn't missed anything (as I sometimes do when I blitz). And it was not EASY to read some of it, because of the subject matter and what some of the
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past-setting characters get up to, but it is ridiculously good
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LibraryThing member nbmars
I couldn’t put this book down. Dana Franklin, a young black woman living with her white husband Kevin the year 1976 is repeatedly and involuntarily drawn back in time to antebellum Maryland in the early 1800’s to rescue her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin. Although only gone for a short time from
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1976, she lives for months in Rufus’s world, in which she must experience slavery firsthand. On one trip, Kevin is dragged back with Dana, and sees the same world, but from the perspective of a white "master."

Butler’s meticulous research into the period she describes draws a gripping and shattering portrait of the confluence of race, property, power, and gender. Black women in particular suffered from their positions on the bottom of everyone's hierarchy; their physical weakness and their emotional vulnerability as mothers made them relatively easy prey.

Dana is finally able to break free of Rufus after he has fathered her ancestor. But she can never break free of the time she spent as a slave. The trauma of living in abject terror, of being treated as an object, of being beaten and abused, and of seeing loved ones get beaten, sold, and even killed, will always be a part of her in ways she never anticipated.

In some respects the story is reminiscent of Harry Turtledove novels in which artifacts brought into the past from the future change the course of history; in other respects, I was reminded of Edward Jones’ “The Known World,” with its combined themes of slavery and mysticism. But Butler transcends both authors in this book, in my opinion, with her ability to bring home both the moral ambiguities of slavery, and the complexities of race and gender. Is killing ever justified? If so, when? Can a person who keeps slaves still be a "good" person? Can people be expected to overcome the Weltanschung of their time? How far should a woman go to protect her children? Her self-respect? Is fear an excuse for compliance? How much of our identities is determined by our race or ethnicity? How much should be?

The questions she raises about identity and limitations of the self stay with you long after you, regretfully, put the book down.

Highly recommended.

(JAF)
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LibraryThing member MyriadBooks
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
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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 it 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 her upcoming book, 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.
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
Dana Franklin, a black woman, inexplicably finds herself whisked away from her home and her white husband in 1976, back to the early 19th century, and a Maryland plantation where she arrives just in time to save a young boy from drowning. Over a relatively short period of modern time, she is hauled
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through that same black hole to save him from certain death (usually because of his own irresponsible actions) again and again. He grows older, moving through time normally, and somehow summoning her to his aid whenever necessary. For Dana, her incursions into the past may span months of 19th century time, but upon her return to her present, she finds she has been gone only minutes, or hours, or days. She cannot return at will, and finds she must be in mortal danger herself to return home. The only explanation offered for what is happening is that Dana must keep this man alive long enough for him to father one of her ancestors. Never a fan of time travel stories, I had reservations about that element of Kindred, but I found nothing in the story itself hindered by the usual complications attendant on having characters moving around in time. The author solved the problem (for me, anyway) by making it a supernatural occurrence rather than a technical scientific process, and by setting her characters in the present in such a way that no one ever missed them while they were "away". SO the only problem left is managing those 19th century people who happen to observe her appearing from nowhere, and disappearing before their very eyes. Even granted that some of those people had beliefs that would have inclined them to accept the "super" natural as part of the natural order of things, and that within the story others had reason to be so grateful for Dana's interventions that they shrugged off what they could not understand, this remained a problem for my suspension of disbelief. Furthermore, the idea that a 20th century black woman could integrate herself in any way into the life of an ante-bellum Southern plantation without ending up dead pretty damned soon is awfully hard to swallow. The mistakes she would be prone to, the diseases and infections she would have no resistance to...drinking the water would probably have killed her. There was some interesting exploration of the way a person comes to accept being a slave (a corollary of the Stockholm syndrome, I suppose); some of the personal interaction among the characters was quite complex and probably accounts for the fact that I kept turning the pages with interest. All in all, though, I think this book is more flawed than fabulous, and I can't give it more than 3 stars.
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LibraryThing member ggodfrey
Kindred is thematically expansive; on its surface the novel is a sci-fi yarn about a modern black woman beaming back mysteriously to a Maryland plantation where she saves the life of her white great-great-great-great-great grandfather on several occasions. We never know the agency responsible, or
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the mechanics, or the reasons for these temporal teleportations--we simply accept this alternate reality, content to ride a marvelously constructed book to its dread conclusion.

And by conclusion I mean the end of the plot only; there are no easy conclusions to Butler's thematic meanderings. Kindred is about the complex inter-relations of history, about moral ambivalence, about perception, about race, history, memory, the past as present. I could go on. Dana, who in 1976 is married to a white man named Kevin, accidentally takes him back with her to the nineteenth century on one of her trips. They try to fit in, try to create lies to make their sudden appearance sensible to the locals. They watch kids playing a game where they sell each other off at an auction. The reader thinks about this, about the changes from then to now, about the way things maybe should have changed even more, and wonders what s/he would do in the past in such a situation. Dana's husband Kevin says:

"Look, I won't say I understand how you feel about this because maybe that's something I can't understand. But as you said, you know what's going to happen. It already has happened. We're in the middle of history. We surely can't change it. If anything goes wrong, we might have all we can do just to survive it."

Kevin, the white man, admits he can't possibly see America's past the way his black wife sees it. She can't see it the way he does. They're both living in the past and unable to change it. And yet they also both live in the present and could just as easily transpose this attitude about the past to 1976. Dana is several times tempted to let her white ancestor die for his injustices, but she knows she has to keep him alive so she can exist someday. This is a troubling lesson about privileging the Self over others, and explains a lot about the politics of slavery, about the relations between the slaves as they negotiate their own positions on the plantation, and about the relations between black and white. The most monstrous humans in Kindred show humanity in surprising ways, and the heroic characters are degraded more than once. Dana is mystified by the (then future) examples of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. What possibly could explain the existence of such souls, able to act solely without thinking of the consequences to Self? Her novel is brilliant, and deserves its reputation. I'll be reading more of Butler's stuff down the road.
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LibraryThing member Magadri
A wonderful novel. In this work, we follow Dana, a contemporary woman (from 1976) on her trip back to a slave plantation in the early 1800s. Butler does a great job of exploring the emotional aspects of slavery through the eyes of a modern day reader. Note: if you are the kind of reader who wants
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everything explained perfectly, Kindred is probably not the right book for you--Butler never explains exactly how Dana goes back in time. However, it is important to realize that how she goes back in time is not important; what's important is her journey, what she learns, and what she comes back with. Great book!
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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
It amazes me that Octavia Butler found that the time travel motif was the perfect one to use to bring the reader into the reality of slavery. I think sometimes when we read about the tragedies of the past there's a tendency to think that “those” people were different than we are so were not
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effected as deeply as we would be by the circumstances. Somehow I think we see earlier people as stronger than and not as sensitive as we modern people are. Taking a modern, 1976, black woman back to antebellum Maryland lets us see slavery through modern eyes but in a first person narrative. We feel the sense of betrayal we know any human would feel when she thought she shared a bond with a person only to find they never, never, never would see us as an equal. We see the affection a person would feel for someone they nurtured, we feel the gratitude anyone would feel when a kindness is offered, and we see people unable to open their eyes and share human emotions with beings they own. This is a powerful book with an exciting point of view, and while it is plainly about racism, it uses the same glass to examine sexism. Recommended for anyone willing to look at the human condition.
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LibraryThing member lydia1879
... so I didn't finish reading the blurb when I read this book, so when Dana first travels back in time to the deep south, I was completely blown away.

But this book - I adore it. It's my first book by Octavia E. Butler and I'm now officially a fan.

This book is visceral and raw and vulnerable and it
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has such brilliant character formation. Her writing challenges me as a reader - I can hear her voice through all the plot and the prose.

The thing that I love about this book is that it takes concepts like sexism, racism, slavery, sexuality and it makes them murky and difficult. It takes these 'old' concepts and makes them real.

I heard a lot of names I hadn't heard of before and so, for me, this was a really cool fictional introduction to some really important characters in US history.

If there's one thing I'm sure of, there aren't enough women of colour writing science fiction. But Octavia E. Butler's voice comes out loud and clear against the rest of the noise.

I love this book. (And get in contact with me if you want to know about specific triggers for this book - I'd be happy to give them, spoiler-free.)
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LibraryThing member AnnieMod
On her 26th birthday, Dana Franklin finds herself in a place she does not understand. She did not learn where she was at the time - she saved a boy and then found herself in her own living room. It all looks like a nightmare until it happens again and she finally realizes where (and when) she is -
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a plantation in Maryland in the 1810s. Which is the worst place she could be - Dana is black.

Time travel is one of the staples of Science Fiction - most of the major authors had tried their hand at it. Butler tackled the topic early in her career and put her own spin on it - not only she sends a black woman to the slave-owning South of the early 19th century, she also changes the rules of how time travel works. Dana did not end up there because of an experiment - she just got pulled into the past by something. And any time when her life is in danger, she goes back to 1976 just to be pulled back into the past. Time passes differently in the two eras with no real relation - days and minutes in 1976 seem to cover years in the past although the relationship is not exact.

Before long, Dana and her husband Kevin realize what is pulling her back (if not how) - a boy, and then a man, who is prone to incidents and who appears to be one of Dana's ancestors, Rufus, is always in danger and Dana is always there to save him. The boy is white (which causes some distress - she had no idea he was white even if she always had known his name) and his family owns slaves. If it was not tragic, these first meetings of the 1976 black woman and the boy who owns slaves would have been hilarious.

And so the story goes - Kevin gets stuck in the past by not being close enough to Dana once (although as he is white, his life is not as bad as it would have been... even if it is not easy either), Dana gets pulled at all kinds of weird situations and when she least expects, Rufus manages to grow up despite his attempts not to. And every time she goes back she needs to forget who she is and become someone else in order to survive.

The novel explores slavery in a way that I had not seen before. Butler does not even attempt to make Dana submissive - she may submit but it is because she needs to survive so she can go back to Kevin. It is Dana's story so she narrates the story - and that means that we only get what she sees and learns. Early in the novel Dana sees how slaves are made - by making them scared about their lives and about their families; by removing all but one thread from their lives - sell all children but one - so they have a reason to behave. Dana decides to live - despite being whipped, despite all that happens to her - so she finds a way to submit.

But even though she tells us often enough that this is a different world, she seems to still expect Rufus to change and do things the way 1976 men would behave and keep getting disappointed. On one hand, that's the everlasting hope but on the other, by the later years, she should know better - slavery did not survive for as long without the help of the slave-owners who really believed that are not doing anything wrong.

Butler's story is linear except for a few flashbacks where we see Dana and Kevin meeting and falling in love and the very first chapter. For some reason, it seems popular for books to pull a later chapter and start a novel with it. In some cases it works well - here I think it was a mistake. It told us that Dana survives long enough to lose a hand and that Kevin is there with her in the current timeline when that happens. Which takes a lot from the novel's dynamics - you know that no matter what happens, as long as we do not see this incident, she will be fine and Kevin won't be lost forever. On the other hand it allows a reader to concentrate on what is actually happening and not worry about Dana being shot (or worse). And yet - if anyone asks, I will recommend to leave this first chapter alone and read it just before the epilogue.

That's not the first Black depiction of slavery I had read but the contrast between the racism of the 70s (both families are really not that happy about the marriage) and the casual racism of the 1820s and 1830s is scary. Slavery may be gone but its influence is still with us (and even Dana's job is not slavery per se, you can draw a lot of parallels there as well). Add the rest of the characters - both slaves and slave owners and just as with Dana, the 19th century feels more like home and reality than 1976. One wonders if that was part of the intention - to show that we are not as far removed as one would have thought.

The novel is 40+ years old but for all intents and purposes it can be set today. Society may be better in masking some issues but not much had changed. And it can serve as a cautionary tale - people grow up learning their worldview and they rarely change - no matter how many times you save their life (for example).

Highly recommended - even if you do not like time travel and science fiction - under all of it is a historical novel which needs to be read. And if you ever believed Scarlet to be an independent woman, you really need to meet Dana.
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LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Dana Franklin and her husband Kevin have just moved into a new house when Dana mysteriously begins to travel back in time. At first she spends just a few hours in the past, returning to her own time (1976) to discover that only seconds have elapsed in the present. Dana has no idea how she gets from
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her home in California to early 1800s Maryland, but it seems it has something to do with her ancestor, Rufus. As Dana's trips to the past lengthen, they become more dangerous for her. Dana is an African American woman, Maryland is a slave state, and Rufus and his family are white slave owners...

Dana's story starts at the end. Readers know from the beginning that Dana is back in her own time, has been reunited with her husband, and has experienced a trauma that will stay with her for the rest of her life. The awareness of something dreadful lurking in the background makes it a difficult book to put down. Butler uses Dana to explore the slave system. Between her trips to the past, Dana has time to reflect on her experience and use what she's learned to prepare for what she's likely to encounter on subsequent trips, weighing the possible consequences of each course of action open to her. She learns that there are no good choices. The slave system is an unredeemable evil, and its psychological bonds are sometimes stronger than the physical ones. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member PAUlibrary
A modern black woman 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 again and again for Rufus, yet each time the stay grows longer and more
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dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has even begun.
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LibraryThing member Blakelyn
When I heard the synopsis of this book, I didn't think I was going to like it. Time travel? Not exactly my thing. However, Octavia Butler blends science fiction with historical fiction to create a surprisingly realistic story, despite the fact that the main character time travels between the early
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1800's and 1976. Dana is a black woman, living in the post-Civil Rights movement in 1976, and is married to a white man named Kevin. On her 26th birthday, she is unpacking a box of books in their brand new home when she gets a dizzy spell, and suddenly finds herself transported to the early 1800's, during slavery times. A young white boy, whom she later learns is one of her distant ancestors, is drowning in a river, so she rushes out to save him. Her first "trip" is just the beginning of a long and dangerous adventure, one that will change both her and her husband's lives forever. Her purpose, it seems, is to keep the boy alive, but as he gets older, he becomes more and more like his father - a racist, vile man. Can Dana endure enough to ensure the survival of her blood line?
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LibraryThing member jonbrammer
An intense concept and a gripping plot do not make up for this novel's inattention to language. Kindred falls into the same trap as a lot of genre fiction - it's so enamored of its central conceit or premise that everything is in service to the plot, without even attempting verisimilitude. Butler
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does not even try to write authentic-sounding dialogue for the time period - everything sounds like flat late 20th century American - no regionalisms, no dialects, nothing.

There is a lot to unpack with this - Butler is rightly revered not just for representation but for her innovations in sci-fi - and she doesn't soften her depictions of suffering to appeal to a wider audience. I just didn't find anything distinctive about her writing style.
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LibraryThing member yooperprof
Fascinating blend of "slave narrative" and "time traveller" genres. Octavia Butler is well known as a prominent African American writer who worked in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, but who was widely respected across the lines for her sensitive treatment of racial, class, and gender issues. When we
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read this in my local book-group, one of our members mentioned that she had met Butler back in the early 1990s at a science fiction writers conference in San Diego. "Majestic" and "commanding" were two adjectives she used to describe the author's presence and personality. That comes across in this book! I liked the way that "Kindred" infused a historical novel with personal emotive force by using the "trick" of time-travel." In a lesser writer, the time-travel thing is just a gimmick, but Butler used it with great finesse.
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LibraryThing member EmScape
Ms. Butler combines the slave narrative with conventions of science fiction in this novel. Dana is a black woman living in the late 1970's with her white husband Kevin. She is transported back in time to the 1800's in order to save the life of her white, slaveholder ancestor. Once, Kevin is
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transported with her. She spends quite a bit of time in this period and is treated as a slave. Her 20th century upbringing and sensibilities quail at this and she tries to affect some change, at times with disastrous results. She is forever changed, both physically and mentally by this experience.
While I am quite used to stories of time travel, the slave narrative is new to me. This book was loaned to me by my African American co-worker when she found out I liked science fiction. I would imagine this book reads more like a slave narrative than science fiction, as the time travel is just a device to place the protagonist in this setting. Her experiences are heartbreaking, and remind us that it wasn't too terribly long ago that people of African decent were treated as less than human.
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LibraryThing member MissMea
One of the most powerful books I've ever read...my very first sci-fi experience, but one I will never forget...intertwines American slave history in such a way that leaves goosebumps and makes you wince...overall, an A+ read.
LibraryThing member ladybug74
This book was different from anything else that I've read lately. African American literature and science fiction combined isn't something that you come across very often. I looked up other books by this author and none sounded interesting to me, but I definitely enjoyed this one.

Times have really
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changed just since this book was written in the 1970's. When Dana and Kevin wanted to find samples of old documents, they would have had to leave home to search at the library. Today, they would just go online and Google whatever they wanted to find. I also noticed that Dana told Rufus near the beginning that she would prefer to be called "Negro" or "colored." Today, that would not be politically correct.

I didn't find it very realistic that Rufus would treat Dana so much differently than his slaves, though his treatment of her was far from being good. Dana got a true taste of what slave life was like and I felt so bad for her as I read this book.
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LibraryThing member akblanchard
In this brilliant, harrowing novel, African-American Dana is repeatedly called upon to time-travel back into the early nineteenth century to save the life of her ancestor, a white slave owner. As a black woman she is understood to be a slave, and she experiences all of the horror and uncertainty
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that role entails.The novel effectively shows the corrupting influence of slavery on both whites and blacks. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member ReginaR
Time travel is so cool! What beats traveling back several hundred years in to the arms of a handsome Scottish highlander … or traveling back in time to meet your spouse while she is still a child … or traveling in time to solve a supernatural mystery in an attempt to save the future … or
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traveling back in time to learn of the world’s beginning or forward to witness its collapse. There are so many different ways time travel can come in to play in a story. I honestly thought I had seen and read them all when it came to time travel, but I could not have been more wrong. I had never before read a time travel novel, where the main character travels to an incredibly dangerous and distasteful time. The set-up of Kindred could not be more extreme – the main character is a young African American woman who is, repeatedly and without any control of her own, sent back in time to the antebellum south where she finds herself enmeshed in relationships on a plantation occupied and run by slave-owners and slaves. As an African American woman, such a trip into the past is not an easy one, nor is it safe. Each trip back becomes increasingly dangerous and more disturbing. But who was safe during that time period? Definitely not blacks, whether free or slave. Kindred does not shy away from telling their stories.

Kindred was published in 1979, yet for some sad reason I only recently discovered the author, Octavia Butler. Having finished Kindred in the space of two days, I intend to hunt down each and every book written by her. She is not an author I want to miss out on. Occasionally, reading a book written and published decades ago, particularly in the science fiction genre, makes the book less accessible and less enjoyable. This is absolutely not the case with Kindred. Kindred pulled me in from page one, the main character – Dana – seemed real; she seemed modern. Her thoughts, her concerns and her actions were not dissimilar from my own. Dana is a writer, who is married to another writer. They are a mixed raced couple living in Los Angeles. Their status as a mixed couple becomes important as the story progresses; it is a factor that allows the story to be broader than just Dana’s experience. The pace of the book is intense and I could not put it down. I was pulled in and terrified at almost every step for Dana. Terrified for her well-being and for her life. Terrified that she would never see her husband again. Shocked at the brutality of the events as they unfolded.

Time travel and science fiction are labels that work to make this book seem more whimsical than it is. Kindred addresses heavy topics between the front and back covers – freedom, love, ownership, and survival. How does an individual survive in an atmosphere where every minute puts them at risk? How does an individual survive in a situation where their survival comes at the cost of another’s loss of family and loss of life. How does one survive the loss of their children – taken at the hands by a cruel slave owner? How does a woman preserve her integrity – again at the hands of a cruel slave owner? The topics are dark and disturbing (as they should be), but the main characters are so genuine and likeable that while the subject matter is gruesome, it is still fed to the reader in the form of entertainment. In between the dark images and storyline, are bits and pieces of the love story shared between Dana and her husband and her desperate desire to remain in her own modern time with her husband.
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LibraryThing member DarthDeverell
Octavia Butler’s Kindred begins as a time-travel story using the bootstrap paradox, with twenty-six-year-old Dana Franklin finding herself transported back in time from the modern day to 1812, 1815, and then 1819-1831 on an antebellum plantation in Maryland. She soon discovers that the common
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thread between her travels in time is the need to rescue Rufus Weylin, whom she meets as a young white boy and realizes is her ancestor. She must save him when he finds himself in danger or else risk her entire family disappearing from history. Though the novel begins with this science-fiction concept as its premise, it soon transitions into a psychological examination of the system of slavery and a way to interrogate the idea that a modern person would simply act differently if they found themselves transported back in time to the pre-Civil War South.

Butler’s work echoes historic slave narratives through her use of first-person narration and following patterns that Sandra Y. Govan identified as typical of the format: loss of innocence, harsh punishment, strategies of resistance, life in the slave quarters, struggle for education, experience of sexual abuse, realization of white religious hypocrisy, attempts to escape leading to successful self-freeing. Butler admitted that she toned down some of the overt violence in order to avoid alienating readers, but the subtext often says what she avoids overtly writing. She does make clear that the slave society of the South was built entirely on white male violence, without which the white men in power could not maintain the social order. Their racism and sexism infected every level of society, so that white women helped to enforce it and it created a hierarchy on plantations in order to divide enslaved persons against each other, adding a further layer of social violence.

The story takes place during the Bicentennial and critiques the white-washed version of history that minimized enslaved individuals’ experiences in favor of the Gone With the Wind-style narrative of antebellum life. Butler easily transitions between and mixes genres in her writing, alternating between science-fiction, historical-fiction, psychological horror, and more. Kindred should be read in history classes as well as literature classes in order to introduce students to a complex topic and analyze the multilayered manner in which Butler constructs her narrative.
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LibraryThing member bohemiangirl35
One of the best books ever! Octavia Butler is a master storyteller and I'm so sorry she's no longer with us.
LibraryThing member filmbuff1994
Occasional bad luck is inevitable. Dana, the protagonist of ‘Kindred”s luck is cataclysmic. A strong willed and -minded black woman married happily to a white older man, she is transported through time and space without so much as a how-do-you-do to slavery-era Baltimore to save her white
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ancestor, Rufus Weylin, from an untimely death. Without Rufus’ inevitable union with a slave woman, little Dana will never come to be- or so she believes as she returns time and time again throughout Rufus’ life to save him, increasingly cognizant of what a sadistically self-obsessed monster he is gradually becoming.

“Kindred” is my first book by Octavia E. Butler, and I was struck by how well it delivers on it’s sumptuously creative premise. It is a speculative work of fiction, but is anything but fantastical when dealing with the hardships of the slaves on the Weylins’ plantation. Seeing Dana try to hide her education and her fierce independence in attempts to play the role of a ignorant, subservient slave held a kind of morbid fascination for me. In Rome, do as the Romans do. But in this case you pretty much have the equivalent of a red target painted against your cursedly brown flesh.

As it turns out, time travel works in this kind of like the wormhole to Narnia. Dana is summoned back to the past only to find that was hours for her, turns out to be years for the people left behind in the past. ‘Kindred’ never lets you forget the spiraling disorientation of living in such a changeable reality.

Dana is a well-developed character, weakened but not weak, strong but not infallible. Even Rufus himself, sniveling bastard that he grows up to be, is painted with nuance and ambiguity, rather than thick, derisive strokes. You can see that Rufus is a worthless chode, but you can comprehend how he came to be that way, and hopefully regard him at brief moments with pity, rather than with all-consuming (and for all intents and purposes, well deserved) hatred.

I found the writing in “Kindred” both pragmatic (no frills to be found) and compelling. I was a little put off by how careless Dana, and later, her husband Kevin are at changing the timeline. Actions have consequences, every science fiction-slash- time travel buff knows that. But Dana and Kevin take no heed of the drastic ways they effect historical events.

Also, it was weirdly icky how Butler described Rufus’ continual sexual exploitation of the slave girl, Alice, as love, albeit, a ‘destructive love.’ It was old-fashioned and sometimes downright gross, and I thought that Butler , as a feminist and a woman , would no better than to call assault anything but what it is, assault. Love is wanting what’s best for someone. Rufus certainly didn’t want what was best for Alice, he wanted what was best for himself.

He was a sad little boy who grew into a nasty, pathetically small-minded man, having learned nothing but cruelty and hatred from his father. I liked how his relationship with Dana, his savior, stayed ambiguous throughout (until the end when thing went down in a big way.) It made the book so much more interesting than if she had just hated and been repulsed by him.

More than a science fiction novel, ‘Kindred’ goes beyond mere concept, delivering a pulse-pounding story with a compelling cast of characters. In a time and culture where slavery is a distant concept hidden away in history books, ‘Kindred’ takes it to the forefront of our attention as we watch history unfold with Dana. Like Dana, we are riveted and deeply moved. Unlike Dana, we experience it from the comfort of our own home. ‘Kindred’ isn’t just a must read for science fiction lovers. It’s a must read, period. Fin.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1979-07-13
1969

Physical description

264 p.; 5.38 inches

ISBN

0807083690 / 9780807083697

UPC

046442083690

Local notes

fiction

Other editions

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Paper Book)
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Paperback)
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Paperback)
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