A review by gizzylove
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was amazing. Heavy read, but an important read. Octavia Butler used science fiction, this genius use of time travel to explore it through the lens of a black woman. And it pays off, giving incredible, yet heartbreaking and hard to stomach insights into slavery and the ante bellum south. Throughout it we see these relationships of kindred spirits, the difficulty to accept our ancestors within the context of their time period, and to accept we carry more of them within ourselves than we'd like to admit. We see it with her ancestors, her chosen family in the 1800s, and her husband Kevin, who shows the lack of awareness that white people can have, how time travel in the hypothetical and real is a much different experience, one that Kevin at first saw as not so bad. I truly appreciated the relationships and how they developed which in turn served to display a theme. Butler wrote this in such a way where there is endless commentary, and so much to learn from. 
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