Friday, 18 February 2011

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

I read this book three years ago. It was part of a friend's required reading.
She gave it to me because I was looking for something new to read.



It tells the story of Dana Franklin, a 26-year old black woman living in California with her white husband. The relationship is entirely run of the mill and I remember liking that the book made no big deal about this interracial couple.

This detail turns out to be an important plot after all point because it shows that Dana is a woman, whose life is unaffected by racism, slavery, intolerance. She's a free woman and it's normal to her.

On her 26th birthday, she is summoned through time, back to the antebellum South, by a young white boy. Rufus Weylin is the son of a slaveowner, and, it turns out, Dana's ancestor.
1st wake up call for Dana.

In total, Dana is summoned six times, and each time she must save Rufus from death. This means saving him even after he has raped a young woman. Failure to do so means erasing her timeline. Each time, too, she stays longer, meaning she has to learn to live on the plantation as a slave. For 20th century Dana, this means obeying her white ancestor. Failure to do this means being whipped, raped or killed.


Her second mission, in order to ensure the birth of her direct ancestor, is to find a way to unite Rufus with the very girl he raped years before.
The story ends with Dana having to make a difficult decision. What she doesn't know is that either decision will cost her.


I loved this book when I read it. (I even passed it on to another friend, who I'm sure never read it, and will never give it back since we're no longer on speaking terms. F***!) Today, I came across a reference to it and googled the author. Now, I know the story was set in 1976 but I thought that it had been written recently. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Butler wrote this story back in 1974.

In an interview, she said that taking a modern-day black woman and making her experience slavery was her way of making people feel slavery, not just intellectualise it. I know that it certainly worked in my case, since reading that book is what made me confront on an emotional level what it would mean to be a slave.

A definite recommend for anyone.

No comments: