Kindred - Whole Book (spoilers allowed) (Jan 2018)

[Caroline]

This is the general thread for discussing this month's Wild(est) Card pick Kindred by Octavia E. Butler - spoilers welcome!

I've included a summary of the Fall-the Epilogue below the spoiler tags below.

(view spoiler)[

The Fall: we learn how Dana and Kevin met and how they first started dating; both are writers; when Dana goes back this time, Kevin holds on to her and also winds up in the past; Rufus has fallen out of a tree and broken his leg; Kevin and Dana come up with a plan where Kevin will tutor Rufus while his leg heals and they will encourage Rufus to like/depend on Dana as "insurance" for future visits; we learn more about Margaret and Tom Weylin; Dana witnesses one of the slaves being whipped; other characters we learn more about are Sarah, Carrie, and Nigel; Weylin finds Dana reading and whips her, which sends her back to 1976.

The Fight: We learn more about Dana and Kevin's relationship; Dana wakes up in 1976 and realizes Kevin didn't come home with her; her cousin comes to care for and thinks that Kevin beat her; Dana stays at home for 8 days before going back to find Rufus being beaten by a slave named Isaac; Isaac is Alice's husband; Rufus had raped (or tried to rape?) Alice so Isaac had beat him badly; Dana convinces Rufus not to tell his father what happened so that Isaac and Alice may escape; Dana learns that Rufus is in love with Alice and will do anything to be with her; we learn Margaret has gone to Baltimore and Kevin left; Rufus says he will help Dana get in contact with Kevin; Isaac and Alice are caught; Isaac's ears are cut off and he is sold; Alice gets beaten badly and bitten by dogs; Dana nurses Alice back to health; Rufus then forces Dana to take part in his plan to get Alice into his bed; Dana finds out that Rufus hasn't mailed her letters to Kevin so she runs away; she's quickly caught, gets kicked in the face, and whipped; Tom writes to Kevin, who then comes to get her; Rufus threatens them with a gun before they are able to get away; Rufus is about to shoot Dana when both Dana and Kevin are transported back to 1976

The Storm: Dana and Kevin are back home; Kevin tells Dana he was in the past for five years; while there, he helped slaves go north; Dana goes back to the past and finds Rufus face down in a puddle, he is very sick; Weylin dies of a heart attack; Rufus initially blames her for Weylin's death and sends her to the field for punishment; later, he has Dana take care of Margaret, who has returned from Baltimore; Dana helps Rufus write letters and convinces Rufus to take interest in the children he's had with Alice; Rufus and Alice finally have baby Hagar - Dana's ancestor who will start her family line; Rufus sells a slave named Sam after he asks Dana to teach his brother and sister; Dana slits her wrists

The Rope: Dana is back home and tells Kevin she spent 8 months in the past, he tells her she's been gone 3 hours; she spends 15 days in 1976 but travels back on the 4th of July; she finds that Alice has hanged herself and Rufus is considering killing himself; Rufus had told Alice that he had sold their children - he had actually sent them to Baltimore with his mother; without Alice around, Rufus becomes more demanding of Dana; he tries to force himself on her and she kills him with a knife; Nigel sees the two of them; she goes home but her arm gets caught in the wall

Epilogue: Dana and Kevin travel to Maryland so they can see the plantation in their current time; Dana tries to find out what happened and learns that the place burned down - she figures that Nigel must have burned it down so that no one would be blamed for Rufus' death

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What did you think of the book?

Did you find the use of time travel to be an effective storytelling mechanism? Did it present the horrors of the past to you in a way you may not have considered had this been a retelling of things that happened a long time ago? Butler has been praised for her ability to depict scenes as they're happening very vividly - and with good reason! Apparently she did a lot of research prior to writing Kindred by reading a lot about the history of the times, as well as by reading many slave memoirs.

What did you think of the other characters in the book? Butler has been said to have tried to subvert the image of slaves as depicted in fiction. Dana specifically points out that Sarah may have been called "mammy" in some other household and feels disgusted when reading Gone With the Wind on one of her return journeys to 1976.

What do you think of Kevin? Apparently Butler decided to add him to the story to make things more complicated for Dana. Do you see parallels between him and Rufus? How do you think his time in the past changed him?

Do you have thoughts/comments/questions on other themes or parts of the book? One of Butler's questions when researching the book was why so many slaves accepted slavery, as well as what it felt like to be owned. Do you think she answers this question or does a good job of exploring it?

Please feel free to add anything else!

[Calzean]

A very interesting way of depicting the life of slaves in Maryland early 1800s. I liked the depiction of Dana and Kevin's life in 1976 and how their families reacted poorly to their marriage of mixed colours. This subtle questioning of progress of racial equality matched the utter brutality of slave life, their powerlessness and strategies for survival. The depiction of Dana as a strong and determined woman able to make her own decisions was also a powerful message in the 1970s.
What I thought was a bit weak was the dialogue (everyone seemed to talk in 1970s speak) and the acceptance of the characters in both time spans of the mysterious ability of Dana to undertake her time travel. Still the power of the slavery story and the message of equality overcame these issues and left me with a profound respect for Octavia E. Butler.
I thought Kevin was an interesting character, an older white guy for a husband. He seemed to be dwarfed by Dana in terms of challenging the system and I did not understand why he left the slave property when he knew his wife would eventually return.

[Caroline]

Thanks for the comments, Calzean. I agree that it was a bit odd how everyone fairly easy accepted the fact of her time travel, including Dana. Though, it's a relatively short book so I wonder if Butler understood she wouldn't be able to thoroughly examine every possible problem/issue and instead focused on Dana's position as a modern black woman in both societies.

I wondered why Kevin chose to leave as well, though I thought there must be something more to his story than what we're told. He seems hardened in many ways, including in how he speaks to Dana, when they reunite so who knows what all he had to endure while she was gone.

[Kathleen]

I think they mention later that Kevin was helping slaves escape. It would have been hard to sit around for five years just waiting for Dana, while all this awful stuff was going on.

For me, not dealing with the time travel worked. It kept this book from being like other time travel stories that deal with the technicalities of how that happened. I think you're right, Caroline, that Butler was choosing what to focus on.

I loved the book. It was genius to put a present day character in that past and watch them react and cope. It gets us closer to it in a way that nothing else can.

[Marc]

Kathleen wrote: "It was genius to put a present day character in that past and watch them react and cope. It gets us closer to it in a way that nothing else can. "

I felt the same way as Kathleen. Time travel would normally fall into a sci-fi type of category, but Butler uses it somewhat like magical realism in this book (basically, a vehicle for telling the story). I was really impressed with how subtle she treated the characters--the way their environment and circumstances played such a strong role keeping me from pigeon-holing them morally. That kind of roundness made this story incredibly real and entrenched me as a reader right there alongside Dana.

[Suzy]

I also really enjoyed this book and was glad when I saw it was a group read - it had been on my tbr too long! I agree that the time-travel really allowed Butler to tell the story of slavery and the nuances of black/white relationships both during that time and in contemporary America. I thought transporting a black woman from 1976 to early an 1800's slave plantation was brilliant, allowing her to illuminate things about race relations that a straightforward story set in just 1819 or 1976 would not have allowed. I liked that she didn't focus on the process of the time-travel, but started the action after Dana was plopped into the scene in the past. In that way, it reminded me of Exit West, where immigrants were suddenly in a new place after walking through a magic black door.

I also appreciated that Butler didn't hit us over the head with messages about slavery and its lasting effect on American society. In a "critical essay" at the back of the paperback I had, she even said that her aim was to not be on a soapbox nor pedantic, but to let her ideas and points come through her story.

[Whitney]

In an interview with Randal Keenan, Butler had the following to say:

"Kindred is fantasy. I mean literally, it is fantasy. There's no science in Kindred. I mean, if I was told that something was science fiction I would expect to find something dealing with science in it. …

…With Kindred there's absolutely no science involved. Not even the time travel. I don't use a time machine or anything like that. Time travel is just a device for getting the character back to confront where she came from."

[Nadine in California]

Calzean wrote: "What I thought was a bit weak was the dialogue (everyone seemed to talk in 1970s speak) and the acceptance of the characters in both time spans of the mysterious ability of Dana to undertake her time travel. Still the power of the slavery story and the message of equality overcame these issues and left me with a profound respect for Octavia E. Butler.."

I dnf'ed this book a couple of years ago, and still feel guilty about it. What kept me from continuing was the fact that in her first trip or two to the late 18th century (which was as far as I got), no one seemed to notice that Dana's clothes were in a style and fabric that didn't exist in their world. I could swallow the time travel, but not this.

[Franky]

I just finished tonight, and I'll think further on it. On a whole, I really enjoyed the book and keeping up with the comments from everyone, which really enriched the reading experience. It's been mentioned already, but I too, questioned a little the reactions/acceptance of some of the characters about Dana's sudden transportation into their time period, like they just didn't really react too much. I thought the essay and reading guide in the afterward were pretty brilliant. Overall, I'm really impressed and would like to look into reading more work from Butler.