Kindred

This is the first book by Octavia Butler I've read, and I am slightly upset at myself for waiting this long. I did not want to put it down.

Butler writes a story that completely sucks you in and makes you check some basic assumptions about race at the door - or at least, it did me. My initial mental image of Kevin was black, until Butler explicitly described him as white, and I was surprised at my shock and mental shuffling.

Butler's story also brought slavery to life in a way that history books, slavery narratives, or historical fiction did not. Seeing antebellum slavery through modern eyes made the story more real, and I could relate with Dana's reactions, which are of course based on modern sensibilities that I myself shared.

This was show more not an easy book to read but it was a book I'm glad I finally did. show less

3.5, rounded up.

A fresh and imaginative time-travel novel, which takes a 1970s black girl into the 1815 past of her ancestors and the days of slavery in Maryland. How her time travel is possible is not explained and there are some less-believable aspects of it (as if time travel should be logical?), but these do not detract from the story, because this is not a story about time-travel, this is a story about survival and hardship.

I thought Butler did a remarkable job of making all her characters realistic and interesting, and she delves into the complicated relationships between slaves and slave-owners and manages to make even the most inhumane of them human. I find it difficult to feel any strong emotion toward a caricature, so it show more mattered to me that the evil in people was not so overdone as to preclude belief and thus I could hate them. Particularly with one of the main characters from the past, I struggled with understanding how he could be compassionate and loving on one hand and cruel and self-centered on the other, but then I thought, that is how it must have been. There must have been parts of a person that they shut off both emotionally and intellectually in order to continue with such a reprehensible way of life.

My thanks to the Catching up on Classics group for selecting this as a group read. I feel sure I would never have picked it up otherwise, and it was quite a pleasant surprise. show less

I've only recently become aware of the late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, whose contributions to the genre have likely been overlooked due to her being an African American woman. This novel, starting in the bicentennial year of 1976, tells the story of Dana, an African American writer repeatedly torn from her own time in California and sent to antebellum Maryland plantation. There she has to save the life of a boy, and later a man, named Rufus, the heir of the plantation owner. Early on, Dana discovers that Rufus is her own ancestor, so her existence depends on his survival.

This book does not shy away from the malignant evils of slavery - beatings, selling off family members, and rape. But it get's even more uncomfortable in show more how on Dana's increasingly longer visits to the past, she grows to consider the plantation as home, and develop a fondness for Rufus. Dana's devotion to protecting Rufus is unsettling considering that Alice, a freed black woman who is reenslaved by Rufus over the course of the novel, is also her ancestor, and Dana never shows the same level of concern for protecting her. It's something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, or more accurate the way in which its possible for one to look past the most grievous faults of family members and friends.

Dana is married to a white man named Kevin, and one occasion she brings him back in time with him, stranding him there for several years when she bops back to the future. Although Kevin is a progressive white man, he is still not capable of understanding the power dynamics that privilege him in the past over Dana. Nevertheless, Dana's knowledge of the future and seemingly magical power to appear and disappear over time gives her something of a an advantage over Rufus in their ongoing relationship.

This is a powerful and well-constructed novel that feels very contemporary despite being over forty years old. Much like reading Ursula Leguin, I had to remind myself that Octavia E. Butler actually inspired and informed many of the conventions of later time-travel fiction. show less

After reading (and loving) the Dawn series, this was my next foray into Octavia Butler's writings. Capturing the fierce emotions of her characters seems to be a strength of Butler's. It was that way with Dawn and the same is true for Kindred. Kindred's main character, Dana, must endure the inexplicable time travel between her life in 1976 and the pre-war South, on top of dealing with the realities of being a slave when she is pulled back into time.

Each time she is pulled back in time, it is because the life of a young white boy is in danger. She realizes that the boy, Rufus, is a descendent, and his survival is tied to her own.

The novel is rich in the obvious themes of racism and sexism, but I think the tumultuous relationship between show more Dana and Rufus also speaks to the frequently very complicated relationship that African-Americans have with white Americans. In one sense, we feel disdain toward continually being relegated to second-class citizen status, yet there really doesn't seem to be a way to move forward in this nation without forming a kindred bond. Despite how often Rufus' treatment of Dana becomes deplorable, she realizes that they need each other and must find a way to move forward together . show less

A terrible time travel story, and an excellent story about slavery. If the grandfather paradox bothers you and you want your time travel to make sense in any way this will be a challenge - you don't even get a nod toward it being just a mental trip, there are unambiguous and drastic consequences. But it succeeded as a story about slavery in not indulging in the narrative you'd expect. There's no traveling back to confront the injustices or attack them, to spread abolitionism or crush the slave states. Nor is there some personal "death before slavery" stance. Instead it's incredibly effective at transmitting a sense of helplessness, partly through the involuntary nature of the time travel that reflects a loss of control in the old world. show more “Slavery was a long slow dulling” nails the horror. It’s all just bearable enough, with brutal punishments for disobedience, to numb you into following the path of least resistance. That creeping compliance is the really upsetting part. show less

Timeless and gripping, as important for how it lays bare the inner workings of male supremacy as it does to White supremacy.. And as usual, every character is as tall as can be. Butler knows people better than any writer and short scenes evoke their hearts.

Dana and Kevin Franklin are a young married couple, both writers, who have finally started making enough money from their writing to support themselves. They buy a new house in a small suburb of Los Angeles in 1976 but before they can settle in and finish unpacking, Dana starts feeling nauseated and dizzy and then disappears completely from her home, reappearing on the banks of a river in an unfamiliar place where she notices that a small boy is drowning. The boy is Rufus Weylin and he is her great grandfather many times removed.

After Dana saves Rufus’ life she is returned to her home in California where her husband is skeptical of her experiences even though he cannot explain how she disappeared right in front of his eyes. Over the show more next days and weeks Dana and Kevin’s lives undertake a strange turn since Dana never knows when she is going to disappear into where she finds out is early 19th century Baltimore, a place fraught with danger for her because she is a black woman and Baltimore, at the time of course, is a slave state.

Dana’s comings and goings in 1819 Maryland seem to be predicated on saving the life of her young ancestor, Rufus Weylin, who is prone to getting into life threatening scrapes. He has to live to father a child named Hagar who is the forerunner of Dana’s branch of the family. When he is young, Dana has hopes that she will be able to help shape Rufus’ personality thereby helping the slaves on the Weylin plantation. But despite her best efforts to shape Rufus into a “humane” plantation & slave owner, Rufus is still a white man of his time with considerable power over the lives of other people. Rufus enjoys Dana’s company and counsel, and even loves her (and others much to their detriment) after a fashion, but he is also angry, calculating, capricious, vindictive and dangerous. He and Dana have a tenuous relationship based on their mutual understanding of the threat that each poses to the other (she can always refuse to save him and let him die, and he can subject her to any number of the more severe aspects of slavery), but Rufus is used to having his way all the time. How much can Dana compromise and still retain her own freedom?

Kindred is a compelling read and each time I have picked it up I have not been able to put it down in spite of knowing the way that the story ends. It’s one of those books where each time I read it I come away from it with more than when I read it the first time around. I marvel at Octavia Butler’s genius in being able to weave so many threads together to create a story which is both complex and disturbing on so many levels.

Unless you are living through a particular situation or time period, or are in someone else’s shoes, it’s very hard to judge people and the culture of their times. I also feel like it’s even hard to judge things in our own times, but that’s another story. There are some things in life that are universally wrong, and slavery and the the system that it spawned is definitely in that category, but when Dana goes back she is constantly trying to navigate a system of wrongs to ensure that her family survives, and to ensure her own personal freedom and safety. She is trying to preserve her love for her husband Kevin, which turns out to be no easy task considering he is a white man, and though he vehemently believes that slavery is wrong and more sympathetic than the average white male in 1819, he has a very different experience than she does, and doesn’t experience slavery as personally as she can.

The characters and their relationships to one another are super complex and they parallel each other all over the place, which I noticed before but not as strongly as when I read it this time around. Kevin and Dana love each other and are in a relationship, something that is incomprehensible in 1819, but still it’s the kind of relationship that Rufus would have probably liked to have had with Alice, a free born black woman whose enslavement is his fault, and whom he will he will take by force to have create the child that is Dana’s ancestor. Dana is always in the untenable situation of wanting something that will ensure her family line though it comes at a high cost to someone whom she has grown to love and genuinely wants to have her own autonomy.

Butler is able to weave all of the details of plantation life into the narrative from the cookhouse, and the whippings and punishments of slaves, to the plantation celebrations and the philosophy of holding the slaves- and it’s such a personal book! All of the characters have stories, and you get to see so many of them play out. But even better she illustrates all the contradictions, horrors and inhumanity of owning other people. This isn’t a black and white book, but gray all over the place. Should Dana do things that will risk her life and her return to 1976 in order to do good in 1819? What’s the greatest cost to herself that she will bear and how much of her “1976″ self will she compromise in order to fit in and be safe in 1819? There are so many questions and not enough clear answers, and definitely not enough answers which made me happy as I was reading this. Dana is the perfect guide and proverbial “walk in another’s shoes” because she is the modern reader (Kevin also, to a lesser extent and from a diffrent perspective) stuck in what’s for her a hellish time in history and struggling to nagvigate and execute her modern ideas/self among the charm and barbarity of another time. show less