A review by jnzllwgr
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

5.0

While there is time travel involved here, the science and technological aspects that typically accompany science fiction does not have a heavy emphasis. Instead, the impression is that Butler wanted to explore how culture’s traditions and practices shaped the world view of those living in the American South prior to the Civil War. Our heroine, on the eve of the United States Bicentennial, is inexplicably sent back in time to the 1830’s Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her first trip is brief, but already it is clear that there is a time differential where less time passes in the present while she is in the past. She learns that she has heritage connected to the persons she has met and that her moving back and forth between her time and theirs will continue until a particular ancestor of hers is born. All the while, she is a modern black woman thrust into the chattel slavery economy of the past. Issues of race, feminism, power dynamics, dehumanization, etc are all explored. The language Butler deploys is not terribly noteworthy; it felt clunky and I was not struck by any artful turns of phrase. Conversely, it makes for easy reading and a visceral experience with the violence of narrative — something she’s been credited as depicting with great accuracy and authenticity. A complex master/slave dynamic is key to the story — ensuring survival frequently corrupts ethical purity; or, putting it another way, enduring abuse was a necessary means of survival. While the importance of the novel is well established, I was not taken with its craft. It lives in my mind as an array of its abstractions more than as the experience of reading it.