I’ve
bought Octavia Butler’s 1979 Kindred,
I’ve read it, I’ve greatly enjoyed it, but I don’t know if I’m in a position to
review it. A middle-aged white American
male, I can talk until I’m blue in the face about the importance of the novel
regarding black history in my country, but in the end, the most important thing
is that the reader switch windows to their favorite book seller’s site and
purchase the book to fully experience the text.
Rich to the point of bursting with socio-cultural importance, the novel
ranks alongside the works of Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and
other writers who have been key to giving the African American voice in
fiction. Tackling slavery, its legacy,
and contemporary race relations head on, Kindred
gives pause in a multitude of ways.
Like the
best works of speculative fiction, Kindred
uses genre tropes as a springboard to something grander. Though technically a time travel story,
Butler never goes into the details of shifting characters back and forth in
time. Dana Franklin, a contemporary
American black woman, and her husband Kevin, a white man, are taken through
bizarre temporal shifts to the American south circa 1815—the heart of of nearly
every kind of racial injustice and oppression one can imagine. The pair finding themselves on the plantation
of Dana’s great-grandparents, owned by one Rufus Weylin, they must live through
the nightmare of slave life from a 20th century perspective.
Perhaps Kindred’s greatest success is in how it
acts as a ruler. Measuring how far civil
rights have come and how fully they have yet to permeate society (as of 1979),
the reader sympathizes with Dana’s situation and the extreme discrimination she
experiences, and as a result, indirectly understands how far civil rights have
come. All the while, the circumstances
and happenings of Dana’s contemporary timeline, particularly given the racial
dynamics of her marriage, still spark disagreement and unfounded prejudices
that the reader has a significantly more difficult time understanding the basis
of yet is fully cognizant still exists.
The novel’s title announcing its intent, Butler looks beyond these two
viewpoints, albeit in indirect fashion, to propose a vision for the future:
where we were, where we are, and where we should/might be.
And there
are so many other ideas in Kindred
that I just don’t feel informed enough or in a position to unpack. The relationship of Dana’ story to (recorded)
American history, race perception, feminism (including, as related to a
minority), human power dynamics—the novel is a treasure chest of thought
triggers the world would be a better place experiencing and pontificating on
for themselves.
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