Kindred

By Octavia E. Butler

Written by Scribd Editors

The late Octavia E. Butler was a bestselling and award-winning author. Butler was considered one of her generation’s best science fiction writers, receiving both the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995 she was the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Despite all of her influential novels, Butler’s book Kindred is what truly brought her mainstream success.

The story Kindred is that of a black woman, Dana, who lives in Los Angeles in 1976 when she suddenly is transported back in time to 1815 to save the life of a small, red-haired boy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As it turns out, this small boy, Rufus, is one of her white slave-owning ancestors.

As Dana continues to be called into the past to save Rufus, she often stays for long durations in the slave-owning South. Unfortunately for her, the only way for her to return to her life in 1976 she must risk her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9780807083703

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a renowned African American author of several award-winning novels, including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993, and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel in 1995. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

Reviews for Kindred

[julielogan-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved both the unique premise of the book and how the author developed the story. I'm a sucker for time travel books and also for historical fiction. Add into that mix a book dealing with the roles of race and gender and you've got Kindred. The thought of a modern day black person being transported back to the Antebellum South is scary, similar to a modern Jewish person being transported back to Germany in the 1930's. However, the analogy to a Jew in Hitler's Germany isn't quite apt since in that situation it's much easier to see the Nazis as pure evil, only out to hurt Jewish people. What makes Dana's situation in Kindred so spooky and upsetting is how the white people in the story are so unpredictable in their behavior, and how enmeshed their lives are with the slaves they own. If someone is 100% horrible, like the overseers, it is simple to hate them and fear them. But with Dana's ancestor Rufus, it's not so cut & dry. He acts friendly & even loving at some points, only to turn on a dime and become a vicious monster. That unpredictability is frightening. Never knowing what a person's response will be keeps you on edge.The reason behind the time travel - that Dana must keep her white ancestor alive long enough to father the child Dana descends from - brings up so many dilemmas. Like Dana, I at first thought the relationship between Alice & Rufus would be of some sort of forbidden love story - children growing up together & falling in love but unable to be together openly because of society. Haha, what an idiot I was to predict that. That both modern Dana & the modern reader would first think that is telling of the difference between now and then. In real life, that sort of relationship would be nigh impossible based on the roles both people have been born into and on how they have been conditioned to think. I think Butler did a great job portraying all the different layers in Rufus & Alice's "relationship". Dana faces such a difficult moral dilemma with Alice & Rufus. Basically she has to not only step aside but actively encourage the repeated rape of Alice in order for Dana's ancestor to be conceived. What a horrific choice to make - to put aside your feelings as a fellow human being, as a woman, as a black person, and play a part in the destruction of another person. Poor Alice. The other slaves look down on her, hate her, for what happens to her. She doesn't fit in with the slaves or with the white master. She is all alone in her misery. Female slaves were doubly in danger - there is the severe physical violence that all the slaves face and then there is the ever present sexual violence as well. It is psychologically crushing. Using the threat of selling a woman's children to keep her pliable enough for you to have sex with her without her physically resisting - UGH. How completely traumatic for a mother to be forced to deal with that.My one complaint about the book is that I felt we the readers did not spend enough time in present day LA. I think it would have been better if we got to contrast Dana's modern life with her life in 1819. Highlighting the many differences would have been interesting.

[krazy4katz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first time Dana was pulled back in time to rescue Rufus, then returned to the 1970s, I felt it was superficial and manipulative. However each time, as she stayed longer, the richness of her experience as a slave grew more compelling and I ended up liking the novel more. Only a few of the people have 3-dimensional personalities. Unfortunately her husband was not one of them. I couldn’t really feel the love between them. Why didn’t he wait for her? There wasn’t much history in the novel to make their relationship believable. In contrast, her life in the 1800s was more compelling and real to me. The women were more real to me. The ending was sad even though you know she saved what was most important to her. I had no feeling she or Kevin could go back to their previous lives.

[dougbaker · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

KINDRED is one of those rare novels that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let you go until the very end. From the first sentence, Butler's simple, straightforward prose moves the story quickly making it nearly impossible for the reader to put down.

Dana, a black woman living in Los Angeles in 1976, is inexplicably transported to 1815 to save the life of a small, red-haired boy on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It turns out this small boy, Rufus, is one of her white slave owning ancestors, who she knows very little about. Dana continues to be called into the past to save Rufus, and frequently stays long periods of time in the slave owning South. The only way she can get back to 1976 is to be in a life threatening situation. During her stays in the past she is forced to assume the role of a slave to survive. She is whipped. She is beaten. She is nearly raped, twice. She is forced to watch whippings and families being broken up. She learns to enjoy hard work as an escape from the other horrors of slave life. And she watches as a fairly unassuming small son of a plantation owner grows up to be a cruel, capricious, hot-tempered slave owner in his own right. And to be her great-grandfather many generations removed.

KINDRED is about slavery and the scars it has inflicted on American society. There are really three key factors Butler focuses on that reveal the ability of the South to institutionalize slavery. First there is the physical abuse. The constant work, especially the physically exhausting work of a field hand, kept slaves too tired to run or become insolent. Being ever on the verge of a lash or two for minor offenses kept slaves working to avoid punishment. Being beaten nearly to death after escape attempts made a slave reluctant to try again; especially if this is coupled with the abuse of the slave's family. Then there is the psychological abuse. The continual threat of being beaten or watching others be beaten broke the spirits of those in bondage. The worst punishment was sometimes having to watch a family member abused for your transgression. Encouraging slaves to marry and have children also deadened their desire to escape. Families made the slave settle down, gave him or her something to protect and care for. The selling off of a few family members had a damping effect on a slave's spirit. A most poignant example is the slave Sarah, the primary house slave; "Weylin had sold only three of her children, left her one to live for and protect". She rarely questioned slavery, thought little of freedom, because "she had lost all she could stand to lose". The risk of losing the one daughter she had left was too great. Slaves that escaped had to be willing to risk not only their own life but possibly the lives of their family.

The physical and psychological abuse imposed on the slave made it so much easier to accept one's lot in life and avoid the unpleasantries that recalcitrance entailed. The ease with which Dana falls into the routines of everyday life as a slave shocks her. Work is a refuge from the other toils of slave life and the patterns become the norm. There is even an ambiguous feeling toward the slave owner. The slave owner is hated for the physical and psychological abuse imposed on the slave. But at the same time the slave loved the owner in a familial sense, even though the slave owner was seldom worthy of this. Thus slavery became for many the accepted norm of life, even if this acceptance was a tenuous and unhappy one at best. This acceptance was generational. Dana at one point espies children playing at selling each other on the auction block and haggling over price.

Many times throughout history sheer terror has been used to subdue a population and sap it of its strength. One only has to look at the Tsar's of Russia like Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Stalin to realize the extent to which terror can be used to subjugate a people. The Southern aristocracy of the United States practiced a similar terror till 1864 and beyond.

There is much historical evidence for Butler's depiction of slavery and its effects. KINDRED is patterned after the slave narratives becoming more widely read today. These include Frederick Douglass' NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE and Harriet A. Jacobs INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL. Butler could have depicted the beatings and physical abuse in more graphic detail to have a greater impact on the reader.

Slavery even has its effects in 1976. The scars Dana brings back to 1976 are symbolic of the scars slavery has left on contemporary society. Some will heal with time. Some can never heal. Others will scab over and be just below the surface. But they are all there. But in another sense healing has taken place. Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, who is transported to 1815 with her once. While there they both fall easily into the pattern or act of slave owner and slave concubine, roles they must assume to survive. The ease with which they fall into these roles brings about a greater consciousness of their ethnicity. But through this relationship Butler leaves the reader with hope. Dana's love for Kevin is what really pulls her through the most harrowing terrors she faces and in the end gives her the strength to survive this horrible test.

KINDRED is written at the young adult level and moves along at a brisk pace. I highly recommend it for teenagers and adults.

[othemts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've only recently become aware of the late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, whose contributions to the genre have likely been overlooked due to her being an African American woman.  This novel, starting in the bicentennial year of 1976, tells the story of Dana, an African American writer repeatedly torn from her own time in California and sent to antebellum Maryland plantation.  There she has to save the life of a boy, and later a man, named Rufus, the heir of the plantation owner.  Early on, Dana discovers that Rufus is her own ancestor, so her existence depends on his survival.This book does not shy away from the malignant evils of slavery - beatings, selling off family members, and rape.  But it get's even more uncomfortable in how on Dana's increasingly longer visits to the past, she grows to consider the plantation as home, and develop a fondness for Rufus.  Dana's devotion to protecting Rufus is unsettling considering that Alice, a freed black woman who is reenslaved by Rufus over the course of the novel, is also her ancestor, and Dana never shows the same level of concern for protecting her. It's something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, or more accurate the way in which its possible for one to look past the most grievous faults of family members and friends. Dana is married to a white man named Kevin, and one occasion she brings him back in time with him, stranding him there for several years when she bops back to the future.  Although Kevin is a progressive white man, he is still not capable of understanding the power dynamics that privilege him in the past over Dana.  Nevertheless, Dana's knowledge of the future and seemingly magical power to appear and disappear over time gives her something of a an advantage over Rufus in their ongoing relationship. This is a powerful and well-constructed novel that feels very contemporary despite being over forty years old.  Much like reading Ursula Leguin, I had to remind myself that Octavia E. Butler actually inspired and informed many of the conventions of later time-travel fiction.

[devilwrites · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The premise: ganged from BN.com: Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time Dana's sojourns become longer and more dangerous, until it is uncertain whether or not her life will end, long before it has even begun.My RatingWorth the Cash: I'll be honest, this isn't a totally fair rating for several reasons. The first is that I've read other Butler books that have had an added layer of depth to them that effected me more, so this book felt a little "light" in comparison. The second is that I kept reading the book with different expectations, with my writerly brain jumping onto tangents and wondering what would happen if events were different. That's not a fair reading, and I fully intend to read this book again so that I can appreciate it for what it is, not what it isn't. All of that said, this is a very good book, and listen up: IT'S AN EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION TO OCTAVIA E. BUTLER'S WORK. If you've never read her work before? I strongly recommend starting with Kindred, and then moving on to something (anything) else of hers. It's a stand-alone novel, but doesn't fully overwhelm the reader. That's not to say that it isn't overwhelming. The horror of Dana's story is. So is the hopelessness of the past. I'm just saying that for as weird as the time traveling element is, this book isn't NEARLY as weird as her more overt science fiction books, so start with Kindred, get your bearings, and then move on. Trust me: your mind will be blown. :)And I should point out that despite the time travel element, this book is not science fiction. You could maybe call it dark fantasy, but I prefer to use the title historical fiction with the adjectives dark and gritty and horrifying thrown in. It's horror in it's own way, and that's the beauty of Octavia E. Butler's work: she horrifies the reader with truth, and truth seeps through her pages, through her characters, through everything she puts into her writing. Kindred, in that regard, is no different than any of her other titles, and it's well worth the cash.Review style: spoilers and lots of them. If you haven't read this yet, then there's no need to click the link below to my LJ. Otherwise, carry on! As always, comments and discussion are most welcome! REVIEW: Octavia E. Butler's KINDREDHappy Reading! :)

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book really covers the emotional spectrum. It opens in 1976, when Dana, a black woman, starts to time travel back to the antebellum south. She initially thinks the time travel is linked to saving the life of a young white boy Rufus, who - it turns out - is one of her ancestors. As the novel progresses, Rufus's character develops into a man typical of his time period, and Dana struggles to protect others from him. The story gets darker and while the end delivers a satisfying conclusion, I think I may need therapy to process all of what happens in this novel.

[guide2_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very nicely written story mixing involuntary time travel with slavery, as seen through the eyes of someone from today. Highly recommended!

[paradiseporch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A modern black woman, 26, (Dana) is transported to 1813 Maryland slave plantation to rescue her great-grandfather Rufus Weyburn, son of the owner. Her great-grandmother, Alice, is a freewoman, but becomes a slave when Rufus buys her after a runaway attempt.At the end of the story, Dana’s arm is “caught” in the plaster of her living room, at the point where Rufus’ hand had been when he attempted to rape her and she killed him.Reader’s Guide by Robert Crossley University of Massachusetts at Boston says (pg 267):“The author is silent on the process by which Dana's arm is severed in the twilight zone between past and present. Kindred, one could say, is no more rational, no more comfortably explicable than the history of slavery itself. But that is a little too easy. The fiction has a ruthless logic to its design, and in an interview Butler has stated that the meaning of the amputation is clear enough: ‘I couldn’t really let her come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole.’”Pg 269 Butler herself has repeatedly insisted that Kindred should be read as a “grim fantasy,” not as science fiction, since there is “absolutely no science in it.” She has also remarked that such labels are often more useful as marketing categories than as reading protocols.

[emeraldreverie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Powerful and uncomfortable

[cassandrat-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought the ending was natural. Overall, engrossing, harrowing, and mysterious.

[stephlaymon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is one of the most interesting presentations that I have read of a novel that deals with slavery, and I almost didn't read it once I found out that there was time travel. I just couldn't envision how a novel dealing with a subject of such great seriousness and importance could include something so whimsical as time travel. I have to say that I was glad that I stuck around to find out. It's an interesting premise really. You see, I have read dozens of books that have tackled the subject of slavery and have felt deeply about the subject through the writing of some very talented authors, but Octavia E. Butler, through writing about a modern day woman traveling back in time, gave me something that no one else has until now. The ability to see, fear and be angered about a free woman with all the advantages of her time being taken into slavery and have her rights taken from her. There is also this interesting ancestry connection between present day, main character Dana, and some of the people living in the 1800's where Dana is taken to. That adds a fascinating piece as the reader imagines how her presence in the past might effect her life in the present.I only wish that she would have gone a bit further, however. While there are scenes where the brutality of slavery showed through, there was entirely too much liberty given to the main character because of her position with the plantation owners son. That, coupled with a few minor inconsistencies, and writing that was very, very pleasant, but nothing to blow my socks off, makes this a C rating. Still, I have recommended this book highly to both my mother and my daughter-in-law and I recommend it to you. I am not at all sorry to have read Kindred, and I know that not everyone will have the hangups that I do, plus it truly is a remarkable angle that gave me something different than other novels on the subject.

[borrows0n0wants · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful novel. In this work, we follow Dana, a contemporary woman (from 1976) on her trip back to a slave plantation in the early 1800s. Butler does a great job of exploring the emotional aspects of slavery through the eyes of a modern day reader. Note: if you are the kind of reader who wants everything explained perfectly, Kindred is probably not the right book for you--Butler never explains exactly how Dana goes back in time. However, it is important to realize that how she goes back in time is not important; what's important is her journey, what she learns, and what she comes back with. Great book!

[amymacevilly · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent time travel story. Butler not only thinks about the mechanics but also the effects upon the traveler(s). As you start to read, you follow the narrator figuring things out, and that keeps you going. But after things are figured out, you keep going because you see the characters develop and change. Her characters are complex: none are all good, none are all bad. I am a slow reader, but I was able to finish this in a couple of days by pushing myself. I did so because I've been wanting to read this for a while and it's our upcoming library science fiction book club selection for this month, and with my graduate class starting, I was afraid that I wouldn't have time to finish it.

[jolynne-4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I kept wishing for something better for all the characters knowing history would never allow, better.

[lavaturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting novel that illuminates the brutality of slavery from the perspective of a Black woman from the 1970s. I liked the well-developed characterization of the main and supporting characters. The strange phenomenon that frames the book's events is never really explained, but it doesn't really need to be. The growing strain between Dana and Kevin is well done as well.

[tiffy_reads · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the first book I've read by Octavia Butler and it won't be my last. I stayed up late finishing this book last night. I definitely think this should be made into a movie.

[jdifelice-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was raw, heartbreaking, and just so so good. A must read.

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this brilliant, harrowing novel, African-American Dana is repeatedly called upon to time-travel back into the early nineteenth century to save the life of her ancestor, a white slave owner. As a black woman she is understood to be a slave, and she experiences all of the horror and uncertainty that role entails.The novel effectively shows the corrupting influence of slavery on both whites and blacks. Highly recommended.

[dawnlovesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

just don't enjoy supernatural stuff

[lowie35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this slice-of-life time travel adventure that paints word pictures of the brutality of slavery and racism in the pre-Civil War South. Dana, a black woman married to a white man in the 1970's, travels back in time to preserve her lineage. For me, an unforgettable story that would make a great book club selection! Have meant to read this book for years and am so glad I finally got to it.

[unkletom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My new favorite time travel story.

[rbeffa_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kindred is a 1979 novel that is labelled science fiction but I wouldn't call it that. There's nothing science in the fiction here - it is more sort of a mystical woo-woo thing. Fantasy time travel historical fiction, like "Outlander" perhaps. On her 26th birthday in 1976, Dana, a black woman in Los Angeles has the first of several trips back in time to as early as 1810 Maryland. She rather quickly determines (On her second trip) that it is a connection to a then young boy Rufus who was her ancestor. She soon briefly meets Alice, a young free (non-slave) black girl who was destined to become one of her several times great grandmothers. Dana knows all this because of a family bible that had been kept with the names of the people. The story strikes me more than anything as a history lesson for middle school children on "This is how bad it was to be black, a freeman or slave, in the early 1800's." This is Maryland, not exactly the deep south, but a slave state. In fact, the lesson really was how nasty the white masters, the patrols, were to anyone, since her young ancestor Rufus is a white boy, the son of a slaveholder, and he bears the scars on his body of horsewhippings by his father for misdeeds.There is more to the story; it was interesting to follow what happens between Dana, her husband Kevin, the folks on the plantation and Rufus as Rufus grows older. The interactions between the two were not exactly believable to me towards the beginning of the novel, esp when I tried to puzzle why Dana had been pulled back in time - perhaps it was to make Rufus a better, more informed person, although the book plays it that Dana is called back when Rufus is in danger one way or another. But, this eventually went elsewhere. I wasn't too happy with how this ended. Inconsistencies with the time travel business bothered me.Butler does though show the reader something to think about. Perhaps most notable was how Dana and her husband Kevin started shaping themselves to the environment they were stuck in. They did this for survival but there was more to it. Food for thought in here.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dana Franklin, a black woman, inexplicably finds herself whisked away from her home and her white husband in 1976, back to the early 19th century, and a Maryland plantation where she arrives just in time to save a young boy from drowning. Over a relatively short period of modern time, she is hauled through that same black hole to save him from certain death (usually because of his own irresponsible actions) again and again. He grows older, moving through time normally, and somehow summoning her to his aid whenever necessary. For Dana, her incursions into the past may span months of 19th century time, but upon her return to her present, she finds she has been gone only minutes, or hours, or days. She cannot return at will, and finds she must be in mortal danger herself to return home. The only explanation offered for what is happening is that Dana must keep this man alive long enough for him to father one of her ancestors. Never a fan of time travel stories, I had reservations about that element of Kindred, but I found nothing in the story itself hindered by the usual complications attendant on having characters moving around in time. The author solved the problem (for me, anyway) by making it a supernatural occurrence rather than a technical scientific process, and by setting her characters in the present in such a way that no one ever missed them while they were "away". SO the only problem left is managing those 19th century people who happen to observe her appearing from nowhere, and disappearing before their very eyes. Even granted that some of those people had beliefs that would have inclined them to accept the "super" natural as part of the natural order of things, and that within the story others had reason to be so grateful for Dana's interventions that they shrugged off what they could not understand, this remained a problem for my suspension of disbelief. Furthermore, the idea that a 20th century black woman could integrate herself in any way into the life of an ante-bellum Southern plantation without ending up dead pretty damned soon is awfully hard to swallow. The mistakes she would be prone to, the diseases and infections she would have no resistance to...drinking the water would probably have killed her. There was some interesting exploration of the way a person comes to accept being a slave (a corollary of the Stockholm syndrome, I suppose); some of the personal interaction among the characters was quite complex and probably accounts for the fact that I kept turning the pages with interest. All in all, though, I think this book is more flawed than fabulous, and I can't give it more than 3 stars.

[berly_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Back cover summary: "Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time Dana's sojourns become longer and more dangerous, until it is uncertain whether or not her life will end, long before it has even begun."For those of you who are science geeks, forget it. This is not at all about the "how" of time travel. It just happens in this book. Accept it and move on! Rather, it is a glimpse into the interactions between master and slave and the ties between slaves. Granted the view is slanted because it is filtered through the eyes of a 21st century person, but still very effective. But I have two quibbles: #1 I didn't completely buy the love between Dana and her husband. It just fell flat for me. #2 When Dana ends her journey back in the present, but loses her arm because her arm was trapped in the wall, I thought that was an unnecessary price to pay and that she shouldn't have to carry any more scars than the ones she already had from the whip on her back. But the author wanted a jarring end. To make it perfectly clear that Dana was a changed woman and that life could never be the same for her. (This condensed from an interview I read.) Well, duh! Her soul is changed forever!! And to have it happen when there had never been a hint of this danger in any of the preceding time shifts? I didn't like it. Okay, rant over.I thought the book was quite good and very readable. I mean a gave it a 4.0!

[muddyboy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This graphic novel tells the story of a young African American lady who time travels back to a plantation in the pre Civil War South. Each time she goes back it is to help the plantation owner's son. Eventually her white husband goes back with her and must don the role of her master. As the young boy grows into adulthood. the dynamics of all the characters become much more complex. My chief complaint are that the graphics are simplistic and hard to read. The main character has such short hair I kept thinking she was a man.

[debann6354-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kindred definitely more historical than science fiction or time travel. It was a excellent account of the horrors of slavery, although a more southern state probably is a lot worse. Characters are nuanced and complex. Octavia Butler is adept at dialog. I bought the premise because the tale was what was important as opposed to the time travel. Dana and her husband can never be the same again though the book only hints at that. Ending a little to abrupt and as someone else mentioned the arm amputation not necessary. For me a very compelling read.

[shaunesay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."

Is that an opening hook or what? Of course you have to keep reading to find out how she lost her arm! This is not a happy book, but it is an important one. There is the sci-fi time traveling element, but more striking to me was Dana's realization of how easy it was to accept the situation when trying to survive. As she first finds herself thrown back in time, she is acting a part to survive, but then alarmingly begins to feel like the past is more home than her present. There is the helplessness of slavery on several levels, the overall black slavery of the time period, her inability to control being jerked back into time, and that she has to keep helping this person who is growing to be such a detestable man, so that she can preserve her own timeline. Such a daunting and terrifying prospect, being thrown back into that nightmarish time when everything that she is, black, independent and educated, is the exact worst combination of things for her to be to get along.

A definite recommend from me, and I will be looking forward to more of Octavia Butler's work. Sadly we lost her in 2006, but as this was my first read by her, I have many more to catch up on.

This was my first read for the 2016 Reading Assignment Challenge #2016HW

[pepperwings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This isn't what I was expecting of the book. It's an excellent story, the characters felt like real people, though the backstory was a little light, it was pieced in throughout the story. I anticipated a different kind of science fiction, and maybe her other books are, however, this was about time travel, and more specifically about the era of antebellum south, and peoples' attitudes there, and the current era (though the 1970s are now in the past, and has another feel to it).Great story, I enjoyed it.

[bodagirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To put it simply, I loved it. It started a bit slow, but it's intentional. Butler draws you in to the inner conflict Dana faces of the time-travel paradox and the catch-22 of the American antebellum slave system. The abruptness of the ending was powerful, both horrifying and powerful.

[mooingzelda · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliant novel. Kindred is not really science fiction; the time travel concept is the most science fiction-y thing about it, but it's presented very matter-of-factly and without any real explanation, scientific or otherwise. It's more historical fiction, but from the point of view of someone from the modern era, which is what makes it so interesting, especially now when race relations and the spectre of slavery is very much in the news.The pared-back writing style certainly makes Kindred fairly easy to read in the practical sense, but it wasn't an easy emotional read for me. I became caught up in the characters and their fates alarmingly quickly, and every twist really got to me. It's not often that books do this to me!Kindred is the first Octavia Butler book I've read, and I'm certainly going to read everything else she's done on the strength of it. I just can't believe it's taken me this long to read her.