Tildes Book Club Discussion - Kindred by Octavia Butler
This is the eighth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Kindred by Octavia Butler. Our next book will be The City We Became by Jemisen the first week of December.
I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.
For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.
So I jumped the gun and read Kindred back in August -- partly due to me misreading the schedule, and partly because I was excited to start. So please forgive me if I'm a little foggy on some details.
I thought Kindred was very good. Not in any earthshaking, blow me away, "have to tell everyone about this book" sense, but just in the way that it felt real, believable, and well-told. Despite being classified as scifi, this book felt very grounded to me.
In truth, it also left me feeling a little somber. Not that I would begrudge it for that. It was just a hard read at times, as it was meant to be.
One of the first things I had to realize is that Dana isn't a modern woman exactly as I'd recognize her today. She's a modern woman in the '70s, when this book was first written. The difference of 50 years may not seem much compared to the 160 years that Dana travels, but it was enough to force me to reset my assumptions.
Dana is no stranger to racism. She was raised in Los Angeles and would've experienced the Watts Riots of 1960s, just ten years before the story takes place. And while Kevin was shocked at the judgemental response they received to their interracial marriage, it came as no surprise to her. It was just the world she grew up in.
All this is to say that Dana was already a hardened and adaptable character when she was first transported to the early 1800s. It was a completely different world, yes, but it was familiar in that she already understood its inequality. Once she gets over her initial confusion, she immediately recognizes the danger she is in and learns how to blend in.
This story uses a lot of contrast to illustrate its points. Kevin is in contrast to Dana, both in race and in experience. The 1970s are in contrast to the 1820s, and the framing narrative occasionally takes us back to remind us of that. And of course, the living conditions of the slave owners are starkly contrasted to that of the enslaved.
Rufus, as a character, is one that's a little harder to define for me. At times, the story almost wants us to feel bad for him. He's often sick, beaten up, or in some other kind of trouble. We see Dana feel for him and come to care about him. This makes it all the harder when he grows into a monster of a person, willing to rape, beat, and separate families.
Partly I feel this is commentary on the difficulty of overcoming one's society and upbringing. It was "just the way things were", and certainly the way his father raised him. Dana and Kevin's teachings just couldn't overcome that momentum. But I don't think it's that simple, either. Butler often emphasized that Rufus chose to do terrible things when it suited him. He found justifications, and shut down or lashed out when confronted with his behaviour. So while he may be a product of his environment, he is not an innocent victim. He had agency and still made decisions. I did not mourn when he met his end.
I feel that Kindred is an important book. It offered me the kind of perspective I could never get through lived experience. I feel bad that I can only truly begin to understand through entirely fictional accounts, but I appreciate reading it all the same. I think it was a great pick for our book club, and I hope others found it valuable too.
This novel is a masterpiece. There's not a single dull moment; I was completely invested from beginning to end. After the premise is set up, the major character arcs go how you'd expect, with few major surprises. However, this does not diminish the tension; instead, there is a pervasive, dreadful sense of inevitability.
I found it very easy to relate to the main character. While she repeatedly makes decisions that forseeably get her into deeper trouble, in context she makes them for understandable reasons (usually empathy). We'd all like to think that we're too strong, smart, or wilful to ever be slaves; surely we'd fight back! Yet our strong, smart, wilful main character's journey impels the reader to understand how a victim of abuse and injustice can 'let it happen'. The time travel was an effective in enhancing relatability: the point-of-view character is a modern-day person (and thinks like one), selling the idea that the victims of slavery are not intrinsically different from, or weaker than, the rest of us.
While this novel was written in the 1970s, the writing style does not feel at all dated. Certainly the themes are relevant today, and may remain so for as long as humans exist. The novel has no difficulty eliciting horror, outrage, and a sense of injustice; alongside moments of humanity, compassion, and hope.
One more top level comment then I'm cutting myself off: I thought this book was amazing and powerful. I'm glad we read it. There were times when it was extremely hard to take. I listened to it on audiobook, and it was extremely well narrated, but I think there were times that the narration heightened the experience of the story and made the characters' pain almost unbearable.
I thought the book's exploration of privilege was one of the most interesting and powerful themes for me. Two examples:
First, Kevin's inability to really understand Dana's experience highlights the difficulty of piercing white male privilege. I think this is the compliment to @Idalium 's point:
Our "modern" white man whose racial biases are progressive enough to have allowed him to be in an interracial relationship impels the reader to understand how someone from the privileged class can 'let slavery happen'. Obviously, this is not the whole of Kevin's story, but I think it is an important part.
My second example, and I think the more powerful one, is the way that Rufus pushes responsibility onto Dana and the other slaves to avoid having to take responsibility for the horrors he perpetrates: rape, violence, breaking up families. Time and again he coerces people with violence or the threat of violence, and he always frames the violence as being caused by them for refusing to comply. Rather than take responsibility for his actions, he transfers his discomfort to his victim.
There's a contrast here with Rufus's father, Tom, who expresses much less angst in his dealing with the slaves. His decisions are more straightforward and cynical calculations of value and cost: for example, how many of Sarah's children can he sell while still maximizing the work he gets out of her. For Tom, the slaves are little better than animals, and his consideration for dealing with them goes as far as it would for other animals in similar situations.
Rufus, probably because of his childhood experience sixth Alice and Dana, does see some humanity in the slaves. He experiences some guilt. And he is a study in how privilege forces someone to both see and not see. By navigating the seeing and the not seeing, Rufus maintains personal distance from guilt and remorse, while transferring those costs and the violence he engenders onto the slaves. They bear those costs so that his privilege csn be undisturbed (or less disturbed).
I am a cis white male, so seeing these things improves my understanding the way privilege works itself out, which is helpful for me in my own journey.
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I've been wanting to read Kindred for a while, but I got caught up in some other books and didn't get to it in time for this discussion. It's just as well, though, because this is the first time I've realized that the book I've been wanting to read is Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, which is a non-fiction book about Neanderthals and not a novel about time travel. But this discussion makes the other one sound good, so now I have two Kindreds on my list to read.
What did you think about the characters? Who was noteworthy or surprising? Who did you relate to?
I found Kevin to be kind of frustratingly weak and unprepared. He lets Dana travel back alone that one time when he could have just grabber her. Then the other time after spending years in the past, he seems unprepared to deal with any possible hiccups to picking up his wife. Showing up alone and unarmed? Ridiculous. Given his past with that family I'd think it'd be prudent to bring at least a few armed men as insurance. Then again, I wondered if I'd be more capable in the same situation. I've lived a life of relative comfort. While I'd like to believe I'd step things up in the right situation, I really don't know. I guess as a reader I'm supposed to feel frustrated that there isn't an easy way to avoid all the problems and conflict. Although some part of me wanted it, if Kevin were hyper-competent, made no mistakes, and swooped in to save the day all the time that would be unrealistic and defeat the whole point.
In contrast, I feel like Dana probably couldn't have acted too differently to improve her situation. It was also frustrating to read about her situation, but she just wasn't in a position to do much better than she did.
Overall, I think both Dana and Kevin were successfully written to make me empathize with them at times and feel something.
What do you think about how time travel was handled in the book?
I think it's brilliant as a central metaphor.
The "rules" of the time travel are that Dana is pulled into Rufus's time when he is in danger of dying, and Dana can escape only when she herself is near death.
To me, this is a way of implicitly conveying the idea that, at the time, white survival was contingent on black slaves. They, of course, had no say in that. The slaves were forced into it, whenever, whether they liked it or not, and had no control over the situation. Dana had no idea when Rufus was going to next need her, but it didn't matter what she thought or what she was doing. She was entirely subject to him.
Meanwhile, black freedom was attainable only through actions that would almost certainly invite death. There was no other way to escape. You either risked death for a chance at freedom, or you were killed and therefore finally "freed" from slavery.
I think it's a genuinely haunting way to set up the story. I know the book gets called sci-fi a lot, but to me it's closer to horror.
I also think there's another level to the time travel: the difference in duration between the past and present. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the length of time she's gone in modern times is always orders of magnitude less than what she experienced historically.
I think this is a nod to the "compression" of history. When we read about slavery, we read about it as a time period, but we don't experience the length of that time -- the years upon years. It might be a chapter in a textbook. A single person's story might be a few paragraphs. In looking back, time and lives are shrunk down.
I think having time be longer for Dana when she was back in Rufus's era was a way of subtly pointing out one of the ways we overlook what slavery was actually like from a modern perspective. Slavery in the US spanned hundreds of years and millions of lives. But we don't feel that weight. It feels so much smaller than that now.
By zooming into one specific life and showing it fully in the past, yet shortened in the present, I think Butler was highlighting how easily we can passively downplay the severity of slavery (even when we're aware of it) by failing to truly appreciate its scope.
That's the perfect description of how I felt about it. I was tense the entire time I was reading it, which is generally a good quality for a book since it means I was deeply invested in the characters and their plights. But since I knew that what was depicted as occurring in the book (and far far worse) actually happened in real life too, it made me equally heartbroken, horrified, and disgusted as well. :(
So overall I don't know how to feel about the experience. It's a lot like a select few movies I have watched over the years that I was glad I watched, and think everyone should watch at some point too because of how important the messages they contain are (e.g. Grave of the Fireflies)... But that I will never ever ever watch again because of how completely emotionally destroyed they left me feeling afterwards.
I had the same experience. I didn't expect how little page count I would be able to force myself to read each time. The tension and dread were so intense in this book.
Y'know, speaking of page count, that's something I never even considered too. It's truly impressive that a book barely larger than a novella could affect me that deeply, and make me feel so many profound (and mixed) emotions in such a short span. So major kudos to Octavia Butler! She
iswas clearly a truly brilliant author!If you haven't read much Butler, I do highly recommend her short story collection Bloodchild and other stories. She and NK Jemisin both do amazing jobs in their short stories of delivering a pretty meaningful punch.
Yeah, I have read NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy and absolutely loved it. And I have already started on The City We Became for the book club too, and became instantly hooked because of how incredibly creative the premise is, and how compelling the writing is so far.
However, this is the first Octavia Butler book I have ever read, but I can promise you it won't be my last. If they similarly emotionally destroy people, I may have to give it half a year before I try reading the next one though. :P
How Long Til Black Future month is SO good (Jemisin's collection) (it does contain short stories related to or inspiring the novels you've read in particular.)
For Butler, I'd suggest Parable of the Sower - a slow/soft apocalypse that might hit too close to home right now. It's an unfinished trilogy with 2 books completed before she died.
Or
Dawn/Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis series... I'm not sure which is the current printing's title. It's a trilogy about aliens saving humanity after we blow ourselves up, and then like, how well it goes when they try to fix us and put us back on a revived Earth.
She, uh, doesn't really do fluff, but the latter was the easier emotional read for me.
If you like The City We Became I'd also suggest Lovecraft Country - the book is authored by a white man, the show was made by black women and both are excellent. It's in a similar vein, though without awakened cities.
Sweet. Thanks for the recommendations! Xenogenesis especially sounds right up my alley, since I am a scifi addict, so I will probably give that a read the next time I get some actual free time. :)
I remember seeing trailers for Lovecraft Country when it came out, and thought it looked interesting too, even though I didn't end up watching it (probably because I simply forgot about it by the time it came out). I had no idea it was based on a book though, so I will definitely have to check that out as well.
The period after Dana returns to present leaving her husband behind, I found particularly tense. As the story progressed and her husband had been away for longer and longer, I was increasingly concerned about the impact the period would have on him.
I was immensely relieved when they reunited, even if he was changed he hadn't become a bad person.
I liked the way that time travel was a mechanism that was used to tell a story, and we don't get any explanation of why it happens or what causes it, and just the barest bit of how it works that's enough for her to navigate the transitions. It lets the more important parts of the story come to the fore.
There are times when I want a detailed exposition / worldbuilding of the physics of star travel or magical system. But I think anything like that would just weaken this story. Instead, it has a timeless element to it.
It reminds me of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger which treats time travel similarly. The way paradoxes are dealt with in TTW would also work for Kindred, so in my head canon they are the same.
Contrast that with something like The Rise and Fall of Dodo by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, where the elucidation of the method of time travel is almost the whole story to the point where it eclipses most of the ideas that could be interesting about the times visited and the people encountered.
While we are comparing time travel stories, I feel like I should also mention Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book. Though there's a second, modern day storyline in TDB, the past stories have a lot of similarities: using a modern viewpoint to encounter a tragedy in the past, the modern person's struggle to adapt to the realities of the past, even the use of modern understanding to help people in the past.
Of the three other books mentioned, I highly recommend The Time Traveler's Wife and The Doomsday Book.
Were you surprised by anything you saw in the book or how you reacted to any aspect of the story?
I think because we know almost from the beginning that Rufus and Alice were Dana's ancestors, I expected the story to be how Dana's influence caused Rufus to attain a more enlightened point of view, and for his childhood relationship with Alice to blossom into something loving and atypical. In my head, Dana would make it back to the present and go research him and find out she had created some beacon of hope.
Needless to say, what actually happened was quite a surprise to me. But I think it is was the story that needed to be told. Something that shows the real brutality and dehumanizing nature of slavery.
Discovering that Kevin was White was a revelation that hit very close to home. I had read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents and have admired the multifaceted way that Butler handles race, but that caught me off gaurd. That, coupled with the very intimate portrayals of violence, stopped me in my tracks.
My first thought when I realized what was going on was that Kevin and Dana would be able to talk some sense into Rufus and try to turn her family's history into a more positive one. Then I thought maybe Dana or Kevin would figure out a way to bring something back from the future with them to somewhat be able to "mass free" a bunch of slaves or at least cause some sort of upheaval.
I was very wrong!
I don't think Butler ever gives an easy out like that. Even when there are "wins" they're usually earned only after a lot of pain. And they're not fully satisfying. The story is satisfying but it's not that kind of victory
What questions do you want to ask the group about this story?
What reactions or thoughts do you want to share based on reading this book?
I just wanted to share that I had to pause and stop reading at multiple points, as it was tough to get through two parts for me. The part when Dana escapes and you realize that just as she gets to the first town that it's already over, she's going to be caught and brought back. The second time is when Alice escapes with her husband and they get caught and brought back as well. I knew the punishments were going to be violent and I could just feel the sense of dread and defeat that the characters had.
I enjoyed the book in the sense that it was well-written and tells an important story. I did find myself wanting to know what happens in the end.
Sadly, I did not have the time to read it, but I am currently reading the next book for the next discussion. So see y'all next time.
I had to read this book in high school for an English class and remember really disliking it. I asked 2 friends from high school and they also remember disliking it. That makes all of your comments wonderful to read. So much positivity for the book. Maybe it's just not a good book for teens and I should give it another chance
I found the book painful to read although I ended up feeling satisfied by the story.
This book features a woman main character. When she is back in time, she is subject to being required to participate in a lot of boring work and caregiving. If the main character were a male 'slave' the experiences back in time would be very different.
I'm not sure I would expect a teenager to like this book.
My HS English teacher has us reading Toni Morrison's Beloved and The Bluest Eye.
*The Bluest Eye* spoilers
The Bluest Eye centers around a main character who is raped by her father.
That's a wild topic to give high school kids, and to be honest, I can't remember much about either except that. So probably chalk it up to my general obliviousness / insensitivity as a teenager.
Looking back though, I can see that she was trying to open our eyes to experiences beyond our own. I feel like she had to do it "on the DL" because that was in East Texas which had a pretty stifling air of racism and sexism at that time (late 90s).
It's not an easy read for a high schooler, because to me it's not an easy read at any age. It deals with really heavy material, and I could easily see high school me not liking the book or not wanting to finish reading this book as it's very "in your face" with the terribleness of slavery and even the hopelessness that goes along with it.
Oh no I'm in Vienna for the book I nominated!! I will write reactions next week when I am home :)
Enjoy Vienna!
thanks!!
Did you learn new things about slavery in the US? Is there anything about how slavery was shown that you disagree with?
I didn’t necessarily learn anything “new”, but I don’t know the last time I’d actually read anything dealing with slavery from a “first-person” perspective. It would’ve been likely around 10ish years ago, back in high school, and I doubt I would’ve had the same experience reading it then as I did now.
I’m struggling to put my thoughts into words, but I really appreciated this book. I’ll likely take a pass at answering some of the other questions/discussing more after sleeping on it.