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Kindred

Octavia E. Butler

Start date: January 15, 2023

Finish date: February 15, 2023

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Justin Pickett

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Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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What Members Thought

Feb 26, 2009 Roy rated it really liked it

Shelves: african-american-fiction, race-relations, literary-fiction, time-travel, science-fiction, women-authored, slavery

An excellent novel that wonderfully blends science fiction with literary fiction. The science fiction aspect is pretty spare for although the concept of time travel is critical to the narrative, the author does not go into much detail about it. It simply happens for reasons that are left unexplained physically (Why bother explaining the impossible anyway? Doesn't make it any more plausible) but make sufficient sense for the reader to easily accept. The main character (Dana, a black woman recentl An excellent novel that wonderfully blends science fiction with literary fiction. The science fiction aspect is pretty spare for although the concept of time travel is critical to the narrative, the author does not go into much detail about it. It simply happens for reasons that are left unexplained physically (Why bother explaining the impossible anyway? Doesn't make it any more plausible) but make sufficient sense for the reader to easily accept. The main character (Dana, a black woman recently wed to a white man in 1976) needs to keep an ancestor (who is white) from dying on a few separate occassions throughout the course of his life in order to sustain the family lineage that will eventually lead to her. She doesn't need to keep Rufus (who she first meets as a boy) alive to a ripe old age, just long enough for him impregnate the woman who will give birth to the earliest relative that Dana was aware of having. The extremely unfortunate thing for Dana is that the time she is repeatedly transported back to is America's period of mass production by slavery. She has no control over when she'll be called back in time. Rufus summons her subconsciously and perhaps consciously as he grows older whenever he is in grave danger. Dana is able to return to 1976 only when her own life is in immediate peril, something that usually but not always is beyond her control. The amount of time she spends on the plantation does not match the length of time that she is whisked away from her real life. Months in the past correspond to the passage of a couple hours in 1976 on one trip. On another trip, two weeks in the present correspond to three months in the past. So the connection is arbitrary, which is fine, for as I said this book isn't really about H.G. Wells style time travel. It's about the kind of time travel that affects all of us, because reality dictates that what happened in the past impacts our present and shapes our future. And as we learn more about our past and discover what had previously been unknown or misunderstood, our present understanding of the world adapts and generates a different future than the one we were previously headed towards. Bravo to Octavia E. Butler, a fine writer indeed. ...more

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Feb 10, 2021 Olympia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle-books, libby-books

Powerful novel.

My favorite quote one of many but this one tops the list. In Kindred Octavia Butler has designed her own Underground Railroad between past and present whose terminus is the reawakened imagination of the reader!
My first book in reading black authors for black history month challenge.

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