Musings: Kindred

Kindred, by Octavia Butler, is the first book I ever read on my new Kindle (Sir Gawain, I've named him).  It was really hard for me to decide which book to buy.  I've downloaded some books from Project Gutenberg to read with Sir Gawain, but I didn't feel compelled to read any of them right now.  All the books I wanted to read were calling to me from my physical bookshelves.  But then I remembered Octavia Butler, that she was an author I've been wanting to read for quite a while.  And luckily for me, her famed Kindred is available on e-book!  And I'm so, so glad I've finally been introduced to this amazing author.

Octavia Butler died a few years ago, leaving a legacy as being one of the very first (and still part of a very small number) of female science fiction authors.  She's also one of thew few African-American science fiction authors.  She paved the way for so many other people, broke down many walls and helped to reshape a genre with her propensity to use fantastical elements in her stories, but never explain the science of how they happened.

In Kindred, for example, Dana's sudden and frequent time travel trips are never explained.  Why do they happen?  How do they happen?  Why do they start when they do and last as long as they do?  We never know.  And, if you're like me, you'll never care, either.  Because the time travel is just the vehicle to an incredible story.

In Kindred, Butler transports a Black woman from her life with her white husband in 1970s California to 1815 Maryland, where her ancestors worked as slaves on a plantation.  Dana doesn't know why it happens, but every time Rufus Weylin is in danger of losing his life- through drowning, fighting, falling down drunk in a pond, anything- she is transported back through time to save his life.  And she does, time and again, even as she sees him growing from a sweet boy to a tyrannical slaveholder.  And through these acts, and the amount of time Dana increasingly spends in the antebellum South, we readers get a first-hand look at slavery- how it was justified, how people shied away from the inhumanity of it, how the slaves handled themselves, how they were treated.  And, even more frighteningly, how immune you can become to something so horrible when it surrounds you so completely.  It can warp your thinking.

This book's true power lies in its ability to humanize every decision people in this book make.  Dana sees slaves try to run away and then be beaten almost to death because of it.  No one steps in to help them.  Dana doesn't judge these bystanders, though, but explains their decision, mostly stemming from self-preservation.  She sees a young boy grow up surrounded by an extended family of slaves who care for him and treat him like a son even as he begins to think they are less than him, even as he begins to consider them property.  And through it all, Dana must help Rufus Weylin, monster that he can be, because he fathers a line of children that eventually makes Dana's existence possible.  She also comes to realize that she does not hate him.  She likes him.  She thinks he has goodness in him, even as he rapes some slaves, sells off others and becomes increasingly possessive and paranoid.

There is so much complexity in this book.  The relationships that exist between the characters are so real, and they deal with true, mind-bendingly difficult problems.  What would it feel like to become the mistress of the man who sold your husband to a slaveholder in the deep south, just so he could have you to himself?  How would it feel to be so happy at the birth of a child, and then realize that child is not only  yours to nurture, but is legally considered someone else's property?  How damaging is it to a person's sense of self to go through life knowing that he is not in control of his destiny?  The book explores all these questions and so many more, all approached from the perspective of a modern Black woman descended from both slaves and slave owners.

It isn't as though I didn't realize how horrible slavery was until reading this book.  I knew.  But Kindred makes the experience so personal, so immediate, that it deepened my understanding.  Slavery is no longer a vague, historical concept in my head of something that happened and is over.  I see now just how deep the psychological ramifications can run.  To know, if you are of mixed race descent, that the woman most likely did not consent to the relationship.  But that if the rape hadn't occurred, you would not be alive today.  That's not easy to deal with even when you are removed from the situation, but Dana goes back and actually sees this happen to her own family.

Kindred doesn't take the easy way out of anything.  It's unflinchingly honest and wonderfully written.  I'm so glad to have discovered Octavia Butler, and I highly recommend this book to everyone.  There is so much here that I couldn't even touch upon, and so much that you should discover for yourself.