“Kindred”, Octavia E Butler
First published on June 1, 1979
Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th 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.
“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
Kindred is one of those books that feels essential—just like how Miss Butler is an author whose works one must read. At least one. It is not just a work of speculative fiction (my favorite); this is a piercing look at the brutal and ugly legacy of slavery and racism in America.
Dana, from 1976, is inexplicably pulled back in time to the 1810s-1820s to the antebellum South. Not a good time to be in, especially for a Black woman. Instead of concerning itself with standard time-travel fare such as paradoxes and causal loops, this novel navigates Dana’s horrifying ancestry.
I’ll be honest: there were moments where the plot felt a little convoluted or disorienting, but I’d like to believe the confusion was intentional. Just like how Dana was destabilized after every abrupt time jump. This book doesn’t let up on the very real horrors that Black people endured then—how dehumanizing slavery was, how insidious racism was, and how disturbingly easy it was to justify cruelty when it benefited oneself.
Kindred is not a sanitized version of the past. It’s almost natural to feel uncomfortable while reading, but it is a necessary discomfort because it forces the reader to confront history not as a distant thing, but as a force that is always reaching out.
Content Warnings
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of content and trigger warnings.
slavery • racism • physical and emotional abuse • rape • suicide
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