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Kindred (Bluestreak Black Women Writers)
by: Octavia E. Butler

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780807083697
ISBN: 0807083690
Label: Beacon Press
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 287
Publication Date: February 01, 2004
Publisher: Beacon Press
Reading Level: Young Adult
Sales Rank: 19081
Studio: Beacon Press

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the classic novel that has sold over 250,000 copies

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back again and again for Rufus, yet each time the stay grows longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun.

'In Kindred Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible, and a balm for the unbearable. It is everything the literature of science fiction can be.'
—Walter Mosley

'[Kindred] is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery and racial dilemmas, then and now.'
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner

'Truly terrifying. . . . A book you'll find hard to put down.'
¯Essence

'Butler's books are exceptional. . . . She is a realist, writing the most detailed social criticism and creating some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre . . . real women caught in impossible situations.'
¯The Village Voice

'Butler's literary craftsmanship is superb.'—The Washington Post Book World

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Not Science Fiction
In the Reader's Guide at the back of my edition, Octavia Butler is reported to have said that she considers Kindred to be a "grim fantasy," not science fiction, as there is "absolutely no science in it." The mechanism by which Dana is "called" from 1976 to the early 1800s is never discussed. It simply is not relevant to this riveting story.

Through the story of Dana, a happily married woman, a successful author of 1976, suddenly and inexplicably thrown, repeatedly, back to a farm in the early 1800s in the slave state of Maryland, Butler examines slavery, the enslaved, and slavery's effects on all the people it touches: those born into slavery, Freedmen and -women returned to slavery, a Black woman from our own era who suddenly finds herself in a slavery-based society, a white man from our era also suddenly thrown into that same society, and those who "owned" other human beings - the slave owners.
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Rating:

- highly overrated
The only good thing I can say about this book is that Octavia has an interesting writing style and the story idea is creative. However, Octavia seems to think that if you are strong in these areas, you can be weak everywhere else. The first major flaw of this book is how extremely mawkish it is. For instance, there is a slave in the book named Tess. Now, Tess never had any speaking lines, so my brain came to referring to Tess as slave x because all the other slaves without speaking lines had no names, so why should Tess? Now, you can imagine how hard it is to make the reader care about slave x who has no speaking lines, so it took me completely by surprise when something bad happened to Tess and I was supposed to feel bad about it. Next, why don't you kill a character before they appear? Then, protagonist Dana spends some time moping over slave x and getting all worked up about it. However, the characters were so ... Read More

Rating:

- First time Butler Reader
I just finished Kindred and was inspired more by the character development and slave narrative than the fantastic aspect of the text. I think Butler handled the historical situation more effectively than she did the actual situation of time travel. I was expecting to be drawn more than I was into the ramifications of the protagonist's time traveling on her present-day life.

I agree that about half-way through the story became a bit too predictable, but I never lost interest, because Butler never slowed the text's pace.

I can't say that I was riveted by the book, but I read it in afternoon, so I mustn't have been bored either. I would recommend the book for high school students specifically. (I am a teacher and I think the book would be one students would be interested in.)

Rating:

- A blending of two genres.
Ms. Butler combines the slave narrative with conventions of science fiction in this novel. Dana is a black woman living in the late 1970's with her white husband Kevin. She is transported back in time to the 1800's in order to save the life of her white, slaveholder ancestor. Once, Kevin is transported with her. She spends quite a bit of time in this period and is treated as a slave. Her 20th century upbringing and sensibilities quail at this and she tries to affect some change, at times with disastrous results. She is forever changed, both physically and mentally by this experience.
While I am quite used to stories of time travel, the slave narrative is new to me. This book was loaned to me by my African American co-worker when she found out I liked science fiction. I would imagine this book reads more like a slave narrative than science fiction, as the time travel is just a device to place the protagonist ... Read More

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