Kindred

Reviews

1. 

   Jacob J. Shay – August 11, 2024

   What fiction should be all about.
   Kindred is a fascinating exploration of a “what if” scenario, which doesn’t happen very often. It manages to balance integrity and faithfulness to the subject material with a gripping story which I think is what fiction should be all about. The novel is entertaining, emotional, powerful, and enlightening. Every character is well fleshed out. The time travel elements are just enough to facilitate a great story but fit into the story in a way that is not distracting and does not causes serious logical discrepancies. The topic of slavery is engaged with complexly and really raises some questions and points of discussion without taking away from the momentum of the story.The central question of the book is “What if a modern African American Woman was somehow transported back to a time of American slavery?” Everything about this question is dealt with complexly -from “What would I bring or have on me that would help me survive or give me an advantage?” and “How much would I be able to explain to people there and how much of an impact would I have on their lives?” to “Could I convince someone living in a slave society to shed his/her prejudices?” and “What would I be able to do to help the slaves? How much of what I did would end up harming them?” The book also deals with Dana’s relationship with her husband, a white man, and how he deals with living in a slave society as well as how their relationship changes after their series of supernatural experiences. I loved how all these what if questions were answered in a way that helped build a world and story and also helped me understand a time in the US not too long ago. The book does a very good job of portraying not just the evil of slavery but its context, the specific ways in which it might have been particularly harmful, and the culture that it existed in.The characters Rufus and Alice are particularly of interest. As portrayals of a white Slave owning man and a black freewoman turned bondswoman they are quite complex. Neither of them is actor or acted upon, perpetrator or victim. Instead, they are both complex people with personalities that exist in a society that complicates their relationship and leads to violence and desperation. Octavia Butler takes just as much time dealing with the relationships between the characters as she does developing and discussing a historical world.Butler goes beyond discussing the historical world by relating Dana’s experiences in the past with her experiences in the present. A good portion of the book speaks to Dana’s life in the 1970s, when the “present day” of the book takes place. Issues of race relations, interracial relationships, and the political climate of the 1970s are raised as well. In this way the novel makes the story even more relevant and recognizable -all of it is captivating and believable.Dana’s unique place as a visitor to history also raises some important thoughts about what it means to be a student of history, what our role is as someone who can “visit” a time without having to live in it. It calls us to wonder what it means to live in our time, in this culture, and how someone from a brighter future might examine us.As I mentioned, I really enjoyed the portrayals of Rufus and Alice but I have some small criticisms of some other characters. The portrayal of Margaret, the white mistress, was a little lacking I think. She was pretty a rather typical portrayal of a white mistress which I think could have been complicated. I also think the other slaves besides Alice could have used some more personality and even Dana as a main character, I think, could have been fleshed out more. I actually wanted to know more about Dana’s views on race in the 70s. It seemed she was pretty passive about it until prompted to think about race through her experience.All in all, though, I found the book engaging and enlightening and in a society where we don’t really like to discuss slavery and its consequences and we want to stay away from boring or “downer” subjects, this book manages to make history interesting, relevant, and powerful.

2. 

   Pedro – August 11, 2024

   Super recomendo o livro, bem escrito e bem interessante. A autora conseguiu ilustrar melhor (mesmo que simplificado) a realidade da escravidão do que muito livro de história

3. 

   Maria Salsilli – August 11, 2024

   Bellissimo! Un must read

4. 

   Mikkel – August 11, 2024

   Reading the challenges of a black woman being transported back in time to an era when slavery was still legal, gives you a gripping insight in the horrible treatment of black humans then.The slow erosion of selfworth, being beaten out of her is impressively written. Youll feel the struggle and balancing. Keeping the master happy.Traveling back and fort in time also has its anxious moments.Recommended.

5. 

   Richieparf – August 11, 2024

   There is an awful lot to love about Kindred. There is a sci-fi underpinning to the novel given the time travel that the story requires, and the well-constructed but not overburdened historical setting that gives the novel its context, but above all this is a book of subtle, truly human characters.In Kindred, we follow writer Dana and her husband, fellow-writer Kevin. One evening, Dana suddenly finds herself thrown back in time to save the life of one of her descendaants, Rufus. The young son of a slave owner, Rufus finds himself in several life-threatening situations. Over the course of several visits back and forward in time, Dana realises that she must keep him alive in order to save herself. At the same time, she sees first-hand the relationship between Rufus and Alice, one his slaves from whom Dana would eventually descend.As a woman wearing jeans and who lacks all the deferential habits of the other black women that Rufus’s father keeps enslaved, Dana struggles to adjust. On subsequent visits, Kevin is able to travel back with her. This is where Butler teases out the subtleties most skillfully, as Kevin finds the world much easier to navigate as a white man. When she is thrown back to the present without him, he even moves north to the free states, meaning he isn’t there when he comes back. In contrast to his distant travels, she is unable to even make it a few hundred yards away from the slave owner’s property.Dana’s powerlessness to stop the time travel, her realisation that she has to serve the slave master in order to save herself, and Kevin’s startling if brief remark that it didn’t seem as bad as he would have expected, are all examples of how Butler so powerfully conveys the terror of slavery in a unique way. This is a truly excellent and important book.