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Kindred

Octavia E. Butler

Start date: May 1, 2019

Finish date: May 31, 2019

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Why we're reading this: New School Read, May 2019
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New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Apr 30, 2019 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, classics, science-fiction, read-in-2019

This book was a wonderful surprise and I listened to the entire thing in one day. I couldn't stop listening. Here is the thing about me, as a reader: I dislike science fiction. So, I was a bit worried when it was chosen as a BOTM by one of my groups. But, this book was wonderful.

Dana, a modern (1976) African-American woman, finds herself travelling through time to visit a young boy named Rufus. It is 1819, and Rufus is a white son of a slave-owner in the deep South. Dana believes that she can in ...more

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Dec 23, 2015 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fin-2016, 1970s-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Loved both the unique premise of the book and how the author developed the story. I'm a sucker for time travel books and also for historical fiction. Add into that mix a book dealing with the roles of race and gender and you've got Kindred.

The thought of a modern day black person being transported back to the Antebellum South is scary, similar to a modern Jewish person being transported back to Germany in the 1930's. However, the analogy to a Jew in Hitler's Germany isn't quite apt since in tha Loved both the unique premise of the book and how the author developed the story. I'm a sucker for time travel books and also for historical fiction. Add into that mix a book dealing with the roles of race and gender and you've got Kindred.

The thought of a modern day black person being transported back to the Antebellum South is scary, similar to a modern Jewish person being transported back to Germany in the 1930's. However, the analogy to a Jew in Hitler's Germany isn't quite apt since in that situation it's much easier to see the Nazis as pure evil, only out to hurt Jewish people. What makes Dana's situation in Kindred so spooky and upsetting is how the white people in the story are so unpredictable in their behavior, and how enmeshed their lives are with the slaves they own. If someone is 100% horrible, like the overseers, it is simple to hate them and fear them. But with Dana's ancestor Rufus, it's not so cut & dry. He acts friendly & even loving at some points, only to turn on a dime and become a vicious monster. That unpredictability is frightening. Never knowing what a person's response will be keeps you on edge.

The reason behind the time travel - that Dana must keep her white ancestor alive long enough to father the child Dana descends from - brings up so many dilemmas. Like Dana, I at first thought the relationship between Alice & Rufus would be of some sort of forbidden love story - children growing up together & falling in love but unable to be together openly because of society. Haha, what an idiot I was to predict that. That both modern Dana & the modern reader would first think that is telling of the difference between now and then. In real life, that sort of relationship would be nigh impossible based on the roles both people have been born into and on how they have been conditioned to think. I think Butler did a great job portraying all the different layers in Rufus & Alice's "relationship".

Dana faces such a difficult moral dilemma with Alice & Rufus. Basically she has to not only step aside but actively encourage the repeated rape of Alice in order for Dana's ancestor to be conceived. What a horrific choice to make - to put aside your feelings as a fellow human being, as a woman, as a black person, and play a part in the destruction of another person. Poor Alice. The other slaves look down on her, hate her, for what happens to her. She doesn't fit in with the slaves or with the white master. She is all alone in her misery. Female slaves were doubly in danger - there is the severe physical violence that all the slaves face and then there is the ever present sexual violence as well. It is psychologically crushing. Using the threat of selling a woman's children to keep her pliable enough for you to have sex with her without her physically resisting - UGH. How completely traumatic for a mother to be forced to deal with that.

My one complaint about the book is that I felt we the readers did not spend enough time in present day LA. I think it would have been better if we got to contrast Dana's modern life with her life in 1819. Highlighting the many differences would have been interesting.

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Nov 12, 2022 Johanne rated it liked it

Shelves: black-authors, 2022-books

Somehow this book just felt a little lacklustre to me. I’m not sure if I can put my finger on exactly why. I feel like it’s more of psychological horror than SciFi but it seemed to be a step removed from its own horror. I mean, imagine being ripped back and forth in time with no control, always instigated by eminent mortal danger. And always to a time and place of slavery, where, as a black woman, white people can do anything they want to you and they do. Pure horror. Perhaps it was so horrifyin ...more

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Dec 08, 2016 Leslie King rated it it was amazing

I now want to read everything Octavia Butler has written.
It left me still wanting to know more about the characters.
Well researched, and I kept forgetting it was written in the 70s

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