Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Kindred

A film critic I like, Angelica Jade Bastién, said on a podcast once, as an answer to a question about time travel, that as a Black woman she obviously wouldn't be doing any. Fair enough. A film like 2020's Antebellum (so similar to this book story-wise) -- reviewed here by Bastién (https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/antebellum-movie-review-i-am-tired-of-films-like-this.html); hint: she does not like it -- may supply another reason why, apart from the obvious violence, disrespect, hate a lot of history shows Black women. It may be too sappy too, too stiff.

It was announced in Mar 2021 that FX ordered a pilot of a TV adaptation of Butler's Kindred, so these types of stories are still somewhat en vogue, no? "Horror stories. / Except that they were true" Butler writes (117). A 1976 African American woman transported to a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation? That heroine, Dana, is the subject and protagonist; but in some ways the white husband, Kevin, gets an even more problematic fate: "if he survived here, it would be because he managed to tolerate the life here. He wouldn’t have to take part in it, but he would have to keep quiet about it. Free speech and press hadn’t done too well in the ante bellum South" (120). For all the white supremacist guilt stealing, there's as much blame stealing too?

Butler's original text seems good sometimes -- she describes the doctor with a quick "Just a stupid little man who may be one step up from spells and good luck charms" (216) -- but not so good other times -- "Wait. Let me tell it all to you at once. Then you can have all the time you need to digest it and ask questions" (213) (ok, ok, may be necessary practically, but we can skip it narratively?). But other times it's excellent and powerful, like when Dana has to tragically re-reveal the central tragedy to one of its sufferers:

"How could you not know what it’s like to be a slave. You are one" (247)…
"'I said am I a slave?' / 'Yes.' / 'She had risen half off the bench, her whole body demanding that I answer her. Now that I had, she sat down again heavily, her back and shoulders rounded, her arms crossed over her stomach hugging herself. 'But I’m supposed to be free. I was free. Born free!'" (249).

The central heroine's self-regard, even in spite of the epic brutality around her, is par for the course, one of the points of the whole story maybe: "But for drop-ins from another century, I thought we had had a remarkably easy time. And I was perverse enough to be bothered by the ease" (152); or "'You might be able to go through this whole experience as an observer,' I said. 'I can understand that because most of the time, I’m still an observer. It’s protection. It’s nineteen seventy-six shielding and cushioning eighteen nineteen for me'" (157).

Incisive as all get out still, though, too: "I had thought my feelings were complicated because he and I had such a strange relationship. But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships" (365); and "my life was easier than hers. Maybe I tried to make up for that by taking her abuse. Everything had its limits, though" (375).

I trip up sometimes a little, though, on how un-PC we can be nevertheless. Weird for a 2021 white guy to bring up with a 1970s Black woman, but still: about a minor character, we hear bluntly "used to wonder whether she was a little retarded" (385).

Still, even though Kindred's wildly imperfect and Butler's never the ideal writer, it's a slim-enough book with a powerful-enough premise. Robert Crossley's critical essay about Kindred, included in my copy as an afterword, works as a nice way to enlarge that premise somewhat: Dana having to compromise feminist ideals (428) as well as Kindred as a whole being "no more rational, no more comfortably explicable than the history of slavery itself" (425).

Content Warnings

kbergsten's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

readandfindout's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

In 2019: 4.5 stars. This story was so layered, and it had me on the edge of my seat wanting to know what would happen next. The nuanced way that Butler dissects slavery is excellent. This is the book that made me want to look into everything else she wrote.

2024 reread: 4.5 stars

Style/writing: 4.5 stars
Themes: 4.5 stars
Characters: 4 stars
Plot: 5 stars

Content Warnings

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