Source: Borrowed
Audiobook, 10+ hrs.
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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, narrated by Kim Staunton, is a science-fiction and historical fiction novel about Dana Franklin who travels from 1976 California to antebellum (1816) Maryland by unknown means or a calling from Rufus Weylin, a young white boy living on a plantation with slaves, one of whom Dana is related to. She saves this nearly drowned boy and only returns to her present time when her life is threatened by a shot gun.
Through multiple time-traveling episodes, Dana becomes more akin to the slave-holding ways of Maryland and her actions become less like a modern woman of the 1970s and more like the actions of a slave from the 1800s. Even as she returns within hours to her present time, her adjustment back into her life is tough and wrought with anxiety about returning to the plantation and ensuring she can protect herself. At one point, even her white husband Kevin is trapped in the past, but his experiences are far different from hers and his sensibilities reveal what many of us know, how can you understand what slavery was like if you were not a slave yourself? Can you put yourself in the shoes of another to even empathize with them?
Dana is so naive at the start of these episodes, but she’s also curious, and while she’s given a bit of leeway by the slave owners because she does disappear and reappear randomly in their lives, she is also still considered their property, even if they have no papers to prove it. Her resemblance to Alice and her relatives also poses another threat to her freedom and it also begs the question who is her kindred in this story. She seems like Rufus in many ways (including the love of a man who is white, like Rufus’ “love” of Alice, a slave he owns), but she also seems like her relatives in that freedom to choose and love being important to them.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is deeply complex and utterly riveting, even if the time travel episodes are never fully explained. I sped through this audio and haven’t regretted it.
RATING: Cinquain
About the Author:
After her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer’s workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
The Troop by Nick Cutter, which I purchased from Audible.
