Kindred
2 journalers for this copy...
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 again and again for Rufus, yet each time the stay grows longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun.
I first read this book through a bookring. You can read people's thoughts on the book here. Below is a copy of my original review, written September 03, 2008:
I received Kindred in the mail two days ago, and started reading immediately, as I had been anxiously waiting for this book ever since I joined the ring. I just finished it today.
Kindred is a powerful story, so gripping that I had to put everything else aside as I couldn't wait to see what happened next to Dana and the others. Butler's words bring the past alive, and her characters feel very real. Something that resonated with me throughout the story was the way the slaves were coping with the brutality in their lives. The decisions Dana had to make, when there were no good choices available... It's so easy to criticize other peoples lives when you are privileged enough to have a choice, and to be blinded to the fact that other people might not have the same choice.
I thought Butler did an amazing job in describing the slave owners as well. I often felt impotent rage when reading, as the entitlement Rufus felt towards his slaves and especially Alice illustrated beautifully how having power over people can allow you not to see it when you are doing wrong towards somebody else. This passage on page 123 is a perfect example of entitlement:
"Yes," I repeated. "How dare she choose her own husband. She must have thought she was a free woman or something."
"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. Then his voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I would have taken better care of her than any field hand could. I wouldn't have hurt her if she hadn't just kept saying no."
I liked the passage on page 117 where Dana reads about the holocaust, and realizes that slavery wasn't all that much different. More people were killed in a short time on concentration camps, but slavery lasted for nearly two centuries, and the amount of slaves who died because of slavery must be staggering.
I thought the introduction written by Robert Crossley made the reading experience even richer, only I thought it would work better as an afterword, as Crossley discusses the events in the book in his introduction. What he wrote about the similarities between Kevin and Rufus was interesting, and definitely something it didn't pick up on myself. His analysis on how powerlessness results in choicelessness was spot on. And when I read that Octavia Butler's grandmother worked in canefields, and how her mother had to work since the age of ten, I realized how slavery was still present, only in different form. The way Octavia's mother was treated as invisible by the white people who employed her as a housemaid sounds very similar to the way white masters treated their slaves. Not to mention, how today, immigrant workers, who work in the fruit/vegetable fields, are exploited in the US.
Kindred was the first book I read by Octavia E. Butler, and I intend to read the rest of her books as well. I also ended up buying some books mentioned in the introduction, The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez and the Amazons! anthology, which includes the first Dossouye-short story by Charles R. Saunders. For the first time in my life, I'm truly interested in reading sci-fi! :)
I received Kindred in the mail two days ago, and started reading immediately, as I had been anxiously waiting for this book ever since I joined the ring. I just finished it today.
Kindred is a powerful story, so gripping that I had to put everything else aside as I couldn't wait to see what happened next to Dana and the others. Butler's words bring the past alive, and her characters feel very real. Something that resonated with me throughout the story was the way the slaves were coping with the brutality in their lives. The decisions Dana had to make, when there were no good choices available... It's so easy to criticize other peoples lives when you are privileged enough to have a choice, and to be blinded to the fact that other people might not have the same choice.
I thought Butler did an amazing job in describing the slave owners as well. I often felt impotent rage when reading, as the entitlement Rufus felt towards his slaves and especially Alice illustrated beautifully how having power over people can allow you not to see it when you are doing wrong towards somebody else. This passage on page 123 is a perfect example of entitlement:
"Yes," I repeated. "How dare she choose her own husband. She must have thought she was a free woman or something."
"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. Then his voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I would have taken better care of her than any field hand could. I wouldn't have hurt her if she hadn't just kept saying no."
I liked the passage on page 117 where Dana reads about the holocaust, and realizes that slavery wasn't all that much different. More people were killed in a short time on concentration camps, but slavery lasted for nearly two centuries, and the amount of slaves who died because of slavery must be staggering.
I thought the introduction written by Robert Crossley made the reading experience even richer, only I thought it would work better as an afterword, as Crossley discusses the events in the book in his introduction. What he wrote about the similarities between Kevin and Rufus was interesting, and definitely something it didn't pick up on myself. His analysis on how powerlessness results in choicelessness was spot on. And when I read that Octavia Butler's grandmother worked in canefields, and how her mother had to work since the age of ten, I realized how slavery was still present, only in different form. The way Octavia's mother was treated as invisible by the white people who employed her as a housemaid sounds very similar to the way white masters treated their slaves. Not to mention, how today, immigrant workers, who work in the fruit/vegetable fields, are exploited in the US.
Kindred was the first book I read by Octavia E. Butler, and I intend to read the rest of her books as well. I also ended up buying some books mentioned in the introduction, The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez and the Amazons! anthology, which includes the first Dossouye-short story by Charles R. Saunders. For the first time in my life, I'm truly interested in reading sci-fi! :)
I'm lending this book to harmaja. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Thank you - will read & return!
I didn't manage to get around reading this book after all, and because I don't want to keep it forever, I'll be returning it to CandyDarling.
Left at the Cable Factory to wait for CandyDarling!
This book is back on my bookshelf, displayed proudly in my PC collection. :)
