Kindred
Feb 2004 · Beacon Press
4.6star
215 reviewsreport
Ebook
264
Pages
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About this ebook
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.")
From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner
The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.”
—N. K. Jemisin
This book has been published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the cover available.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner
The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.”
—N. K. Jemisin
This book has been published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the cover available.
Ratings and reviews
4.6
215 reviews
Keith Blackshear
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May 27, 2024
Kindred's main character, Dana, must endure the inexplicable time travel between her life in 1976 and the pre-war South, on top of dealing with the realities of being a slave when she is pulled back into time. Each time she is pulled back in time, it is because the life of a young white boy is in danger. She realizes that the boy, Rufus, is a descendent, and his survival is tied to her own. The novel is rich in the obvious themes of racism and sexism, but I think the tumultuous relationship between Dana and Rufus also speaks to the frequently very complicated relationship that African-Americans have with white Americans. In one sense, we feel disdain toward continually being relegated to second-class citizen status, yet there really doesn't seem to be a way to move forward in this nation without forming a kindred bond. Despite how often Rufus' treatment of Dana becomes deplorable, she realizes that they need each other and must find a way to move forward together .
nytyme mack
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February 9, 2024
I read this so many years ago, and I thought it was great! I still think it's great! I loved the combination of the past and future to tell the main characters' story of how each impacts the other. I did enjoy watching the TV series, mostly out of curiosity to see if they really followed the book. Some changes, but the show was decent. The book is awesome!
Susan Dunn
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August 22, 2020
What a book !! Absolutely a riveting page t urner!! Octavia Butler actually transports you to the old south and back with her outstanding style of writing. You actually feel like you are right there watching the events unfold ! This book should be required reading in schools. Kindred really makes you stop and think of the horror that was the life of slaves not so very long ago ! Excellent reading !!! August 22. 2020
10 people found this review helpful
About the author
Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was the author of many novels, including Dawn, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. She was the recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Nebula Award, and she twice won the Hugo Award.
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