Spellbook Saturday: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

hedgewitchbotanicals

1 year ago

Continuing my audiobook kick, I am very excited to recommend this week’s #spellbooksaturday feature, without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read this year:

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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.
(source: bookshop.org)

As a black woman living in a deeply segregated society, Butler used science fiction as a mode of exploring truths about our own dystopian world. It was while attending Pasadena City College that Butler “got the ‘germ of the idea’ for what would become her novel Kindred. An African-American classmate involved in the Black Power movement loudly criticized previous generations of African Americans for being subservient to whites. As Butler explained in later interviews, the young man’s remarks were a catalyst that led her to respond with a story providing historical context for the subservience, showing that it could be understood as silent but courageous survival.” (source)

Indeed, Butler’s time-traveling narrative explores the subtle social contracts of life under enslavement, the moral compromises made in the name of survival, with such clarity and compassion. As Dana is repeatedly pulled back through time, gaining a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of plantation life, so too does the reader begin to see that nothing is as simple as it initially appears— and no choice without consequence.

As a white woman reading the novel, I found its exploration of the intersection of race and gender in relation to power to be fascinating. I think that as readers we often like to imagine ourselves in the position of the main character, asking how we would respond, etc. And while I like to consider myself a staunch proponent of anti-racism, as I read I often had the sinking feeling that I had more in common with Kevin, Dana’s white husband, than any other character. While horrified by the brutality and generally well-intentioned, Kevin is still a beneficiary of privilege under white supremacist culture, and unable to fully grasp the reality of Dana’s experience. Similarly, in my own ignorance, I am thankful for authors like Butler for helping elucidate and give insight. It was a deeply moving, engaging novel, one which I highly recommend.

Have you read Kindred? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!