Book Review: Kindred by Octavia Butler

by fljustice | Sep 4, 2018 | Books, Fiction, Reviews

Kindred

by Octavia Butler

“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 to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.”

Review:

Originally published in 1979, Kindred is a brilliant exploration of “the peculiar institution” of slavery. In this historical fantasy, Dana, a twentieth century black woman, is ripped from her time and deposited on a 1820’s Maryland plantation to save a young white boy named Rufus from drowning. When threatened by the boy’s father, she snaps back to her own time, wet and muddy from the river, to the astonishment of her husband who saw her disappear before his eyes only seconds before. This is the first in a series of time displacements that occur whenever Rufus is threatened by death and snaps her back when her own life is threatened. The time elapsed includes only a few months of Dana’s modern time, but years in her life with Rufus (as a boy and later as a young man) and the slaves on his plantation. (more…)