Kindred

287 pages

English language

Published Nov. 13, 2004

ISBN:
978-0-8070-8369-7
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Goodreads:
60931

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4 stars (3 reviews)

Kindred is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. First published in 1979, it is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being a common choice for high school and college courses. The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. There she meets her ancestors: a proud Black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. She makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time. Kindred explores the dynamics and dilemmas of …

3 editions

Still powerful almost half a century on

4 stars

Content warning Minor plot information