Kindred by Octavia E. ButlerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
NB: I read the Kindle Anniversary edition with the foreword by Janelle Monae
Kindred is a powerful novel in many ways, particularly in the understated pragmatism of its protagonist, Dana. It seems surprising initially that Dana should be so accepting of her temporal quandary, but Butler seems to know that the surprise is best left to the reader. This leaves Dana to her "travels" and foregrounds instead, the shifts of identity and multi-faceted and nuanced problems of race, in a narrative that exists both then and now (relatively speaking). The reader may find themselves probing clear-cut binaries and assumptions, and struggling to understand some of Dana's choices--this is what makes her very compelling.
In Butler's antebellum south the metric is constantly shifting for what is "kinder", and enslaved persons are given dimension beyond their enslavement. In the Reader's guide, Robert Crossley notes, "One of the protagonist's--and Butler's--achievements in traveling to the past is to see individual slaves as people rather than as encrusted literary or sociological types." And later, "In a Butler novel the black protagonist is there, like the mountain, because she is there." Crossley's point is well-taken --particularly in the more speculative aspects of the fiction.
The ending might seem abrupt, because it is, but it also seemed fitting. The narrative isn't really about the "when" and the plot, as much as it is about how connected things can be across time and space. We see enough to understand, in two temporal contexts, and are left with an unsettling notion that the past, present, and future may be far more intertwined than we admit. The epilogue does actually need to be there (for once), not to tie up loose ends, but instead to loosen up the ends as such, to weave them into our understanding of where our imaginations might lead and how they might serve us in living a present that is much more conscious of the past.
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FTL2025 4B challenge KindreD ------->?
