Thomas's Reviews > Kindred

I wish we could read more authors like Octavia Butler, bell hooks, and Celeste Ng in our English classes instead of white men like Ernest Hemingway. I loved Kindred because it uses the science-fiction/fantasy genre to expose the cruelties and horrors of slavery and racism in an innovative way. Similar to what author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his book Nothing Ever Dies , the United States's education system often informs us of issues like war and slavery through a sanitized, depoliticized lens. Though we "learn" about these events, we do not recognize the cruelty and evil our country's past generations committed - and how we are also complicit if we do not act for justice today. Octavia Butler's Kindred tells a gripping tale and reminds us of how we must not let the stories of our past happen again.

Kindred follows 26-year-old Dana, a black woman who lives in California and gets transported to the antebellum South. There, she meets Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner who will go on to sire the daughter who becomes Dana's ancestor. Dana is teleported back in time over and over again to protect Rufus from death, but each time she travels to the past, she encounters increasing amounts of danger and abuse that put her own life at risk for extinction.

Butler creates a compelling cast of characters in Kindred. Dana, Kevin, Rufus, Alice, etc. all have complex motivations and their relationships with one another feel replete with nuanced power dynamics, as well as love and hate and fear. In addition to imbuing Kindred with a fast-moving and surprising plot, Butler succeeds at showing and not telling the atrocities of slavery through Dana's travels backward and forward in time, in particular her forced journey to acclimate to plantation life in the nineteenth century. Through detailing the pain Dana suffers and the pain she sees her fellow enslaved individuals suffer at the hands of white folk, Butler encourages us to consider the challenges of surviving in an unjust world, just like the one we live in now. Why is it that our ancestors, as well as a lot of us today, are so willing to look away from the evils of racism? How do we stay true to our values in a society that so often pits minorities against each other, gives power to those who disempowers others, etc.? Kindred makes us think about these questions without offering simple answers, providing proof of its thoughtfulness and strength as a novel.

Overall, a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I honestly feel ashamed at my younger self for not reading authors like Butler sooner and for buying into problematic portrayals of slavery, like Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I am doing my best to make up for it now by reading more books about social justice, by donating to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations fighting the good fight, and by having conversations about these topics, volunteering, etc. As a companion to Kindred, I would recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and giving to groups that fight mass incarceration, as that injustice serves in many ways as the slavery of our time. Thank you to Ms. Butler for creating art that allows us to see injustice and to fight it.