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A review by wellworn_soles
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
4.0
What struck me most in this book is the psychological war thats waged throughout; not just by our titular character Dana, but by her ancestors and her husband. The violence in this book is not what will stand with me - it is the way Butler describes the inuring nature of it. Butler understands how environment shapes those within it. We are all daily performers, traversing the stage of our social milieu, conforming to its norms and flexing our personal wills to varying degrees. But when everyone around you acts one way, treats you one way, assumes a thing about you, its impossible for that to not slowly seep into your own self-story. It changes your reactions, alters your sensibility. Master and slave mentality is not innate, it is learned, and none of us should ever think we are somehow impervious to those steady social pressures. Being “a product of one’s time” does not excuse behavior, but its much harder to be against one’s time than we give credit - for oppressor and oppressed.
Dana’s violence in the final act is a physical manifestation of her right to self-actualization. It requires violence - or the threat of it - to first subjugate the soul. It takes another flare of violence to reassert one’s fundamental dignity. Similarly, Rufus’s selfish abuses of power come from seeing the world as inevitably his. He gets what he wants. That’s how it has always been. Even then, the lasting roots are maybe not in the more obvious forms of violence. Butler correctly identifies the small things: the whispers, the language, the tone of voice and the routine action of life as the true face of slavery. You can argue your enslavement is “better than some”, but if you are not free, you remain in chains. 4.5 stars.
Dana’s violence in the final act is a physical manifestation of her right to self-actualization. It requires violence - or the threat of it - to first subjugate the soul. It takes another flare of violence to reassert one’s fundamental dignity. Similarly, Rufus’s selfish abuses of power come from seeing the world as inevitably his. He gets what he wants. That’s how it has always been. Even then, the lasting roots are maybe not in the more obvious forms of violence. Butler correctly identifies the small things: the whispers, the language, the tone of voice and the routine action of life as the true face of slavery. You can argue your enslavement is “better than some”, but if you are not free, you remain in chains. 4.5 stars.