Kindred Author: Octavia Butler | Language: English | ISBN:
B009U9S540 | Format: PDF
Kindred Description
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 repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
- File Size: 1349 KB
- Print Length: 288 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0807083690
- Publisher: Beacon Press; 25th Anniversary edition (February 1, 2004)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009U9S540
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,680 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > American - #13
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Time Travel - #15
in Books > History > Americas > United States > African Americans > Discrimination & Racism
- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > American - #13
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Time Travel - #15
in Books > History > Americas > United States > African Americans > Discrimination & Racism
Book Review by C. Douglas Baker
KINDRED is one of those rare novels that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let you go until the very end. From the first sentence, Butler's simple, straightforward prose moves the story quickly making it nearly impossible for the reader to put down.
Dana, a black woman living in Los Angeles in 1976, is inexplicably transported to 1815 to save the life of a small, red-haired boy on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It turns out this small boy, Rufus, is one of her white slave owning ancestors, who she knows very little about. Dana continues to be called into the past to save Rufus, and frequently stays long periods of time in the slave owning South. The only way she can get back to 1976 is to be in a life threatening situation. During her stays in the past she is forced to assume the role of a slave to survive. She is whipped. She is beaten. She is nearly raped, twice. She is forced to watch whippings and families being broken up. She learns to enjoy hard work as an escape from the other horrors of slave life. And she watches as a fairly unassuming small son of a plantation owner grows up to be a cruel, capricious, hot-tempered slave owner in his own right. And to be her great-grandfather many generations removed.
KINDRED is about slavery and the scars it has inflicted on American society. There are really three key factors Butler focuses on that reveal the ability of the South to institutionalize slavery. First there is the physical abuse. The constant work, especially the physically exhausting work of a field hand, kept slaves too tired to run or become insolent. Being ever on the verge of a lash or two for minor offenses kept slaves working to avoid punishment.
Kindred Preview
Link
Please Wait...