Kindred, by Octavio Butler, science fiction, 1979


Octavia Butler's Kindred, is one of the best books I’ve read. It ranks with Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. Octavia Butler was the first and most acclaimed Black sci-fi writer. Though she died young, she left a literary treasure trove. This is the first of her works I've read. 

First, what is a science fiction book? To be honest, I had to look up the definition. Sci fi is a genre of fiction. Some possible elements include: advanced science and technology of the future, space exploration, parallel universes and time travel. Also, aliens. Kindred explores time travel and parallel universes to amazing effect.

Kindred is compulsively readable. It follows a couple, Dana, who is Black, and Kevin, her White partner. Dana is the protagonist. We view the story through her gaze. Dana travels back to pre-Civil War days. She lives on a plantation, the same one her ancestor Hagar lived on. After a search of baby names on Google, I read that “Hagar” means forsaken. Deserted. Dana is determined when she goes back in time, to not abandon Hagar.

Dana and Kevin are perpetually transported between the before and the present. They never know when it will happen. Sometimes they are transported together, other times, alone. At one point, Dana returns with a severed arm. Somehow she must tell the police what happened without explaining what happened, since they would never believe her. (What? You time traveled?! they would say.) Dr. Cornel West writes about time in one of his songs off the CD "Hope on a Tight Rope." He raps about chronometrophobia: the fear of clocks, of time. Indeed, white people are so afraid of our past, and able to ignore it.

The name Dana, means arbiter, or generosity. It is her responsibility to serve as a link between the past and present, and the pain therein. Why is the book called Kindred you may ask? Ah, we get to the meat and bones. Through rape during slavery, Whites and Blacks will forever be biologically intertwined. For some reason, Dana is inextricably connected to Rufus, a name which means red-haired (and indeed, he is.)

Dana continually saves Rufus from himself. From drowning. From setting himself on fire. And many other ways. It is, ironically only a Black woman that can save a white man from himself. (?) Hmmm. When Dana first meets Rufus in this other world, he is a child. As Dana continues to return to the past, while she never ages, Rufus does. As he ages, he becomes more and more violent, more racist. Dana and Rufus both despise and respect each other. It’s like, they are somehow linked, kin, kindred souls. Though each wants to get rid of the other.

In short, this book delineates the ways in which Black and White lives will be forever inextricably intertwined in America. It also illuminates a very real haunting. By making Dana a time-traveler, Butler shows how palpable the sting of slavery still is. A Dana, carries her whips, bruises and lashes with her, from the past into the present, whenever she time-travels. As Southern writer William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Amen. I highly recommend this work of science fiction. 

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