Kindred

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred is the first ever science fiction novel written by a black woman – Octavia E. Butler. It was first published in 1979 and is her best-selling novel. While it contains tropes and elements of science fiction it crosses many genres and could easily fit into fantasy, historical fiction and speculative fiction. Whatever the genre, Kindred was particularly ground-breaking for its time, and Butler has since been called the mother of Afrofuturism.

Kindred is about a black woman, Dana, who time travels from 1976 California back to pre-Civil war Maryland, where she encounters her ancestors and becomes entangled in the past. Throughout the novel she is inexplicably wrenched back and forth through time, and must figure out how to survive and return home. She quickly realises she must adapt to the time she now finds herself in – a modern, educated black woman living on a slave plantation. Dana plays a dangerous game in becoming a part of the Weylin household, forming relationships with the other house slaves, as well as the white family. Butler does not shy away from describing the brutal realities of slavery, there is graphic violence, and this book is not for the faint of heart.

While it was intense to read I found it deeply moving and engaging, and I couldn’t put it down. I needed to know Dana’s story, if she is able to make any difference in the past, and how she returns to her own time. I found this book to be deeply affecting, it was so easy to feel like you were in Dana’s head and experiencing her pain, grief, love and hate. Butler does an amazing job of depicting the complexities of survival, racism and misogyny. She uses first person narration to deliberately echo the slave-memoirs that she used in her research, and it definitely intensifies the reading experience. As Butler said in an interview – she wanted the reader to ‘feel history’.

You can borrow this book from our collection, as well as a range of Octavia Butler’s other books. And there are actually a few TV and movie adaptions in the works, including one of Kindred, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

Find Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Rosanna