Octavia E. Butler

Kindred

Dana, a black woman, finds herself repeatedly transported to the antebellum South, where she must make sure that Rufus, the plantation owner's son, survives to father Dana's ancestor.

Holly 

My memory of my aunt and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give-and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them.

 We both had books shelved and stacked and boxed and crowding out the furniture. Together, we would never have fitted into either of our apartments. Kevin did suggest once that I get rid of some of my books so that I'd fit into his place. 

“You're out of your mind!" I told him. 

“Just some of that book-club stuff that you don't read." 

We were at my apartment then, so I said, "Let's go to your place and I'l help you decide which of your books you don't read. I'll even help you throw them out." He looked at me and sighed, but he didn't say anything else. 

“The ease. Us, the children ... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery."

And I began to realize why Kevin and I had fitted so easily into this time. We weren't really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors. While we waited to go home, we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles. We never forgot that we were acting.

 "This could be a great time to live in," Kevin said once. "I keep thinking what an experience it would be to stay in it-go West and watch the building of the country, see how much of the Old West mythology is true. 

“West," I said bitterly. "That's where they're doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!" 

He looked at me strangely. He had been doing that a lot lately.

Time passed. Kevin and I became more a part of the household, familiar, accepted, accepting. That disturbed me too when I thought about it. How easily we seemed to acclimatize. Not that I wanted us to have trou- ble, but it seemed as though we should have had a harder time adjusting to this particular segment of history-adjusting to our places in the household of a slaveholder. For me, the work could be hard, but was usually more boring than physically wearing. And Kevin complained of boredom, and of having to be sociable with a steady stream of ignorant pretentious guests who visited the Weylin house. But for drop-ins from another century, I thought we had had a remarkably easy time. AndI was perverse enough to be bothered by the ease.

I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies. I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams. But I hadn't lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me. In fact, she and I were reacting very much alike. My face too was wet with tears. And my mind was darting from one thought to another, trying to tune out the whipping. At one point, this last cowardice even brought me something useful. A name for whites who rode through the night in the ante vellum South, breaking in doors and beating and otherwise torturing black people.

Patrols. Groups of young whites who ostensibly maintained order among the slaves. Patrols. Forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan.

Finally, he came out to the living room where I was sorting books into one of the big bookcases. Fiction only. We had so many books, we had to try to keep them in some kind of order.

I think this should be required reading. 

Hannah Bateman

Kim Staunton

Foggylong

Well written. In the 70s or early adulthood the story might offer a unique perspective, at my stage in life it felt more like trauma porn. 

Marina Gee

Kindred explores what would happen if a woman with 20th-century sensibility was transported back to an antebellum plantation. Dana is a black woman writer in the 1970s. As she's celebrating her birthday with her new husband, she is transported back in time to the antebellum South. There Dana saves a drowning white man, Rufus, son of the plantation owner, where she finds herself enslaved. She realized that she was summoned through time to save him, and it happens again and again, each time transport getting harder and longer as she tries to protect her ancestral line to save herself. 

Excellent. A treat. By no means an easy read, but the discomfort you feel is easily eased by that next coffee, or another Netflix binge. Butler deals with the raw reality of slavery, and in particular the suffering of black women in the antebellum South. 

Jan Jackson

Bria

I truly don’t know what to say. This was a heavy novel, so if you can’t handle that atm, put it off.

Bella Baxter

This was the first book I read by Octavia Butler and it definitely won't be the last. I wish I could say that I loved this book, but I really didn't. It started off incredibly interesting and mysterious but I felt really underwhelmed by the "science-fiction" aspect of it. Besides Dana's time-traveling, I didn't quite get anything else from it. It was quite interesting to read about how this modern-day black woman in an interracial marriage gets a first-hand account of slavery and how it affects her. I just felt like she always let her guard down when it came to Rufus and I expected more out of her. I understand the need for vulnerability in this case, but I really wanted to see her fight back but she just got more injuries and more emotionally scarred. 

Other than that, it was quite the engrossing read, really intriguing.

[Rating: ★★★☆☆] 

Jan. 10, 2023 - Jan. 12, 2023 

Before picking this book up, I've seen tons of good reviews praising this so much. In the end, it didn't satisfy my expectation. Don't get me wrong, it's not really the book's fault, I just raised the bar too ridiculously high. I was waiting and looking for something that didn't happen, and it disappointed me when it didn't give me that. It was my fault for not loving this book as much as I wanted to, but I definitely understand why everyone has given this a much higher rating. 

The premise is as promising as the other reviews says, and as heavy as well, if not more. I love a good time travel story and this has to be the one of the most loose time travel stories I've ever read. No solid explanation for the time travel itself and how it happened, and was focused more on plot progession that happened when the MC was spending her hell time in the past. This can be considered more of a historical fiction than fantasy/sci-fi. The past was so historically realistic that this dealt a heavy blow for me, thinking that this really happened in reality and I actually felt emotionally drained after reading this. And it's not in a good way. 

I don't think I'll ever read this again, I want to spare myself from another emotional damage. But I also agree that this should be read atleast once by everyone, because despite what I just said, it was still worth the read. Lots of trigger warnings, I'm telling you. Just beware of that and read at your own discretion.



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[ 
  NEW READING SPREADSHEETS
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Cody Degen

** spoiler alert **
           4+/5-

Docking it because this could've been the "if I had a time machine id give John Brown an AK" of books

this was such a challenging read. octavia e. butler's imagery is too strong, i sometimes felt as if i'm the one getting punched. 

aside from that, the book was able to provide a different lens on slavery back then and it made that period in history felt... personal (?) as we study history, we often feel detached because we often tackle it as stories that happened in the past. however, dana's accounts made me realize that these are real people and horrors. 

definitely a new favorite piece of literature.

Octavia E Butler was a fine storyteller. I am glad I finally got introduced to her work and happy I used Kindred as a starting point. 

Great concept and even better the execution helped to deliver ! 

I rated it as a 4.25 but I feel like the story will stick with and I love the messages behind as well as how the story portrayed a difficult period with dark (but unfortunately realistic) elements

“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

Amira BEN

Octavia E Butler was a fine storyteller. I am glad I finally got introduced to her work and happy I used Kindred as a starting point. 

Great concept and even better the execution helped to deliver ! 

I rated it as a 4.25 but I feel like the story will stick with and I love the messages behind as well as how the story portrayed a difficult period with dark (but unfortunately realistic) elements

Let’s finish with my favourite quote: 

“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

At first, tough to get into, but once I understood the story structure I couldnt put it down. A captivating, brutal story, with intense perspective.

Cierra Koch-Azeke

Aamna

Couldn't truly appreciate Dana's experiences. Also not what I'd call science fiction.

Will Vunderink

Imaginative and powerful, but a bit of a slog on the sentence level.

peyton mckenzie

eat, sleep, breathe octavia e. butler into my lungs. such a leap from reading “fledgling” to listening to “kindred”. beautifully written and haunting read about time travel, home, violence, power, and the intricacies of familial love. 10/10, a million stars, would read again. butler never misses.

Meagan Fischer 

Sierra

I need time to process this book but I know damn sure I would not be able to do half the things this woman did and the sacrifices she made. 

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

Traci Wilbanks

Butler made me feel like this story was happening to me. I'm a modern woman who would feel so out of place in another, earlier time - just like Dana. The story could have been told differently, but Butler chose the perfect way. Her practical way of storytelling connects to me in such an intense way. I'll read anything she wrote.

It might be that we've become accustomed to the literary devices that were novel when this book was published, but something prevented me from clicking with, what is supposed to be, Octavia E. Butler's opus magnum. It's engaging, confrontational, but not exceptional. 

Frederik De Bosschere

Joy Bush

This book was so hard to read, about a modern (1976) black woman who is randomly sent back to the slavery south to help save a distant relative but she has to live the life of being a slave. 
I didn't know how to rate this bcuz of the content but the writing was still good. 
Now to watch the show on Hulu.

Fantastic book. Harrowing, but utterly compelling.

Naomi J.

"I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came. See how easily slaves are made? they said."

"Slavery was a long slow process of dulling."

I wish everyone would read this book, this is the type of book that should be seen as a classic, that should be read and studied in schools, especially in the US - but everywhere else too. This book is set and written in the 1970's, Dana, a black woman moves to a new home in California with her husband and then suddenly starts experiencing random bursts of time travel where she is sent back to antebellum Maryland in the 1810's. The fact that this book was written forty years ago and is still so relevant in modern times is quite unsettling, but also so important too. It's just mind-boggling to think both forty years later and 210 years later from the two time periods in this book, the world is still be having issues with racism. Maybe if people were reading more literature about racism, about slavery and this type of history then they would open their eyes and realize how backwards their thinking is.

Dana finds herself repeating numerous times in this book that the white men, the slave-owners, are "a man of his time" and 

"just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper"

, and even reading this book with its 70's idioms, such as ableist and offensive language about disabled people, you have to stop and think how this is "a product of it's time" and really question how much can actually be excusable just because it happened in a time when it was technically allowed and normalized. Dana finds herself caring for and excusing the behaviors of Rufus because that's how he was brought up, because that's how society functioned in those times and because those thoughts were so ingrained in that time period.

SPOILERS FROM HERE: You can understand why she does this because he was only a child when she first met him, but in reality Rufus is only her ancestor due to rape, and not even the fact that Dana came back continuously to save his life, and also continuously tries to be his friend, can dissuade him against being a horrible person to her simply because of her skin color. It really upset me while I was reading Kindred, to realize that you find yourself wishing that Rufus would end up being a good man, and then realizing throughout this book that he's not and never will be. When Dana first realizes that Rufus and Alice are her ancestors, the first thought I had was that possibly Rufus would be a progressive man of his time, influenced by his feelings for Alice and under the guidance of Dana - he would begin a reciprocated relationship with Alice. But that is my own naive hopefulness and biases wishing for a happy ending, when in reality, happy endings of that sort barely ever happened in the 19th century. Even in the 70's, with Dana and Kevin, she was still experiencing racism from his sister about their marriage- and it's just so disappointing realizing, despite how far we have come, just how far we still have to go. 

This was a powerful but also very tough read, Dana was really stuck in the middle of a situation where she genuinely could not win or catch a break. The way she recognizes in herself that she is just acting as an observer to the time in the beginning and then realizes again later that she's stopped acting and has adopted her role within that time as a slave herself is hard to come to terms with. Some of the choices she made because of this were incredibly frustrating, but when you step back and look at why she was making those choices or what was forcing her hand you realized there really wasn't much more she could've done.

"Maybe that was why we didn’t hate each other. We could hurt each other too badly, kill each other too quickly in hatred. He was like a younger brother to me. Alice was like a sister. It was so hard to watch him hurting her—to know that he had to go on hurting her if my family was to exist at all."

The only issue I had with this book was the relationship between Dana and Kevin, Kevin's character annoyed me the most out of all of them, and that's a rough thing to say when some of the characters were literally abusive slave masters. I found a lot of their dialogue and his actions unrealistic and stilted, especially in the beginning when she first goes back in time - he's so disbelieving and antagonistic about what's happening to her despite seeing it with his own eyes. Even later on when she's gone back a few times and he's just got back himself, he starts giving Dana a hard time about being worried about going back and I just wanted to give him a kick up the ass and tell him to be more supportive. He was dealing with his own traumas, of course, but I really think his character could've been written better - as it stood, the book probably would've been just as good without his character at all - I truly don't think he added anything constructive to the story line, unfortunately.

In conclusion, this is 100% a five star read, I would urge everyone to pick this book up if you get the chance - but please do check the trigger warnings as there are many. This is really an eye opening and realistic view of what that time period would've been like, it's brutal and violent and horrid to read about, but I think it's truly important to read stories like this that remove the rose tinted filter that stories of this time period often adopt and give you the terrible truth.

Genevieve 

"I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came. See how easily slaves are made? they said."

"Slavery was a long slow process of dulling."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I wish everyone would read this book, this is the type of book that should be seen as a classic, that should be read and studied in schools, especially in the US - but everywhere else too. This book is set and written in the 1970's, Dana, a black woman moves to a new home in California with her husband and then suddenly starts experiencing random bursts of time travel where she is sent back to antebellum Maryland in the 1810's. The fact that this book was written forty years ago and is still so relevant in modern times is quite unsettling, but also so important too. It's just mind-boggling to think both forty years later and 210 years later from the two time periods in this book, the world is still be having issues with racism. Maybe if people were reading more literature about racism, about slavery and this type of history then they would open their eyes and realize how backwards their thinking is.

Dana finds herself repeating numerous times in this book that the white men, the slave-owners, are "a man of his time" and "just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper", and even reading this book with its 70's idioms, such as ableist and offensive language about disabled people, you have to stop and think how this is "a product of it's time" and really question how much can actually be excusable just because it happened in a time when it was technically allowed and normalized. Dana finds herself caring for and excusing the behaviors of Rufus because that's how he was brought up, because that's how society functioned in those times and because those thoughts were so ingrained in that time period.

SPOILERS FROM HERE: You can understand why she does this because he was only a child when she first met him, but in reality Rufus is only her ancestor due to rape, and not even the fact that Dana came back continuously to save his life, and also continuously tries to be his friend, can dissuade him against being a horrible person to her simply because of her skin color. It really upset me while I was reading Kindred, to realize that you find yourself wishing that Rufus would end up being a good man, and then realizing throughout this book that he's not and never will be. When Dana first realizes that Rufus and Alice are her ancestors, the first thought I had was that possibly Rufus would be a progressive man of his time, influenced by his feelings for Alice and under the guidance of Dana - he would begin a reciprocated relationship with Alice. But that is my own naive hopefulness and biases wishing for a happy ending, when in reality, happy endings of that sort barely ever happened in the 19th century. Even in the 70's, with Dana and Kevin, she was still experiencing racism from his sister about their marriage- and it's just so disappointing realizing, despite how far we have come, just how far we still have to go. 

END OF SPOILERS.

This was a powerful but also very tough read, Dana was really stuck in the middle of a situation where she genuinely could not win or catch a break. The way she recognizes in herself that she is just acting as an observer to the time in the beginning and then realizes again later that she's stopped acting and has adopted her role within that time as a slave herself is hard to come to terms with. Some of the choices she made because of this were incredibly frustrating, but when you step back and look at why she was making those choices or what was forcing her hand you realized there really wasn't much more she could've done.

"Maybe that was why we didn’t hate each other. We could hurt each other too badly, kill each other too quickly in hatred. He was like a younger brother to me. Alice was like a sister. It was so hard to watch him hurting her—to know that he had to go on hurting her if my family was to exist at all."

The only issue I had with this book was the relationship between Dana and Kevin, Kevin's character annoyed me the most out of all of them, and that's a rough thing to say when some of the characters were literally abusive slave masters. I found a lot of their dialogue and his actions unrealistic and stilted, especially in the beginning when she first goes back in time - he's so disbelieving and antagonistic about what's happening to her despite seeing it with his own eyes. Even later on when she's gone back a few times and he's just got back himself, he starts giving Dana a hard time about being worried about going back and I just wanted to give him a kick up the ass and tell him to be more supportive. He was dealing with his own traumas, of course, but I really think his character could've been written better - as it stood, the book probably would've been just as good without his character at all - I truly don't think he added anything constructive to the story line, unfortunately.

In conclusion, this is 100% a five star read, I would urge everyone to pick this book up if you get the chance - but please do check the trigger warnings as there are many. This is really an eye opening and realistic view of what that time period would've been like, it's brutal and violent and horrid to read about, but I think it's truly important to read stories like this that remove the rose tinted filter that stories of this time period often adopt and give you the terrible truth.

Powerful time traveling story giving a view of slavery and human interactions through the lens of a modern black woman. The inner turmoil of Dana's struggle/adaption to the time period was thought provoking and will stick with me.

Jenny Engel

Mythos

4.2/5 stars

One of the few things that ruins a book for me is having to read it in class. Usually, when this happens, I end up hating the book because I am forced to read at the pace that the teacher has us read in class. Putting that aside, Kindred is still a great book to read. Time traveling can be confusing at times, but overall we see the author develop these characters well enough to be able to sympathize with even the worst characters in the series. I really liked the ending as well, because it wasn't what I expected. I had expected them to return to the future and stay there, but the reason why this happened was surprising.

I hadn't expected her to burn everything down and for Dana to kill Rufus. Throughout the book, we see Dana feel sympathy for Rufus and try to get him to be a better person, but she fails. We not only see her go back to the future, but we see that she holds no remorse over killing Rufus. 

Although it was a good book because of how I was introduced to it, it'll take a while before I pick this book up again.

Kindred

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