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Book Review
Aug. 7th, 2020 09:45 pmKindred
by Octavia Butler
This time-travel novel is the story of Dana, a young black woman in 1976 who finds herself repeatedly pulled back to antebellum Maryland. Each of these journeys to the past is caused by an imminent danger to Dana's ancestor, Rufus Weylin, scion of a small plantation. Each time she must save his life in order to ensure her own future existence. And each time, she spends between days and months trapped in the past, where she must live as a slave on the Weylin plantation, constantly balancing between resistance and acclimation to this state in order to save her own life and sanity.
I loved this book. Butler does not gloss over the brutality and humiliation of life as a slave, and she gives the characters depth and complexity in their motivations. In addition to Dana, I really liked Alice and Carrie, who were both smart and tough in different ways. Rufus' selfishness and entitlement were all too familiar. Throughout, Butler probes the nature of chattel slavery and how it shaped racial relations in the 19th century and beyond.
by Octavia Butler
This time-travel novel is the story of Dana, a young black woman in 1976 who finds herself repeatedly pulled back to antebellum Maryland. Each of these journeys to the past is caused by an imminent danger to Dana's ancestor, Rufus Weylin, scion of a small plantation. Each time she must save his life in order to ensure her own future existence. And each time, she spends between days and months trapped in the past, where she must live as a slave on the Weylin plantation, constantly balancing between resistance and acclimation to this state in order to save her own life and sanity.
I loved this book. Butler does not gloss over the brutality and humiliation of life as a slave, and she gives the characters depth and complexity in their motivations. In addition to Dana, I really liked Alice and Carrie, who were both smart and tough in different ways. Rufus' selfishness and entitlement were all too familiar. Throughout, Butler probes the nature of chattel slavery and how it shaped racial relations in the 19th century and beyond.
