Synopsis -
"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."
Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor—because without him, she'll never be born.
Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors—she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.
Butler doesn't let you observe from a safe distance. You're trapped in Dana's skin as she navigates impossible choices: submit to survive, or resist and risk everything. You'll feel her desperation as she fights to preserve her humanity while the plantation's brutality threatens to consume her.
This isn't historical fiction—it's time travel that cuts straight to the bone of American racism. Butler pioneered the neo-slavery narrative that inspired Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Water Dancer. But Kindred remains unmatched in its raw power to make slavery's legacy feel immediate, personal, and inescapable.
You'll finish this book changed. Dana's story will lodge itself in your chest and refuse to leave. You'll understand, in ways textbooks never taught you, how the past lives in our present—and why that matters more than ever.
Review -
Somewhere I read a note about Octavia Butler being one of the first African American women to write science fiction. I had to check her out. Kindred was one of the titles she wrote that came highly recommended so I decided to start with this one. I am so glad I did. It was an incredible read. I had a hard time putting down each night. Time flew by as I found myself living in the past and seeing it through Dana's eyes. Powerful.
When the word science fiction is applied, we think of outer space, aliens, and more. But the genre is so much more than that. Kindred is set in our world as it is - but the reader moves with Dana between the present and the past - time travel that happens with little warning and no explanation as to how. Dana somehow has become linked to a white ancestor that would be crucial in her family's lineage continuing. Every time his life is in danger, she is pulled to that time to "save" him. BUT she is African American and he is the son of a southern slave owner living on a plantation. Every trip exposes her to great danger and she has no control over how to return to the present.
Adding to the story's intensity is Dana's marriage in the future to a Caucasian. How can he believe her story of disappearing into the past? Then one time, in an attempt to keep her in the present, he holds on and is taken to the past with her. He ends up living in the house, pretending to be her owner. Butler explores how he experiences the past as a white male, compared to how Dana experiences it living as a female slave.
This is a crucial book to read in a time where there are children's programs promoting the idea that slavery was "no big deal." It was. It was horrific. And this dark time needs to be remembered so it is not repeated.....Lest We Forget!
Buy the Book: Amazon CA ~ Amazon USA
Meet the Author -
Octavia Butler was a highly acclaimed science fiction writer. One of the first African American women to publish in the science fiction field, she is often called the "mother of Afrofuturism" for her influential role in shaping the genre - blending science fiction with Black history and culture to explore issues of race, identity, and power. She published 15 novels and short story collections within the science fiction and speculative fiction genres, and won multiple prestigious awards for her science fiction work, including several Hugo and Nebula awards. Butler was the first science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995. Her work continues to inspire new generations of writers and remains relevant in discussions about racial equity and social justice.
Meet the Author -
Official Website -www.octaviabutler.com
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