Octavia E. Butler - Kindred

Despite my left wing politics and love of science fiction and fantasy, I have neglected Octavia E. Butler for too long. So I am very glad that I picked up Kindred at the Marxism Festival in London this summer, ready for my holiday. Kindred is perhaps Butler's most famous novel and is regularly set as a text in schools in the United States, as well as being made into a recent, short lived, TV series.

The popularity of Kindred lies in part in its approach to its subject. The book deals with the reality of slavery, and the experiences of those who were enslaved, as well as more complex and related questions such as the position of freed slaves in the American South. These are not easy subjects and Butler spares little in her descriptions of the violence of slavery and the day-to-day brutality, including sexual violence, inflicted on the enslaved. 

Butler's approach places the reader at a slight distance, as the story is told by Dana, a working class woman from New York, who is an aspiring writer and married to a white man, Kevin. Dana's ancestors were slaves and she knows a little about them through the inscriptions of a family Bible. She travels back in time to the American South in 1815, pulled back each time Rufus, the heir to a Maryland plantation, life is endangered. Rufus must survive in order for Dana to be born in the future, so she forms a mutual relationship with him, that requires both to protect the other. Rufus' infatuation with Dana also threatens her, and Kevin's trip back in time upsets this dynamic. But Dana continues to return, and spends time with her fellow slaves - encouraging small acts of rebellion, such as teaching reading, while also trying to reestablish contact with Kevin.

This approach is very clever as it allows the reader to be one step removed from the violence, and observe events through Dana's eyes, that is until the slavers decide they need to discipline her. Then the reader, alongside Dana is pulled into the horror.

There is much else in this short novel. The dynamics between the slaves are described, as well as the oppressive and exploitative one between slaver owner and enslaved. These are not always positive. I also enjoyed the way that Butler uses the time travel aspect to illustrate some of the debates about slavery today, as well as demonstrating the way that white people - in the person of Kevin - could simply escape reality. 

This is an excellent novel, that deserves its wide readership and accolades and I look forward to reading more by Butler.

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