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A review by emilyusuallyreading
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
4.0
What I Liked
The premise of Kindred is fascinating. The idea of a black woman in the twentieth century going back in time to meet (and rescue) her white and black relatives from the early 1800s caught my attention immediately. Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, who is brought back in time with her at one point, and this adds even more depth to the plot.
Kindred does an excellent job of placing a modern reader into the mindset of what it would have been like to be a slave in the nineteenth century, treated as subhuman property instead of as an individual with aspirations and independence and true value.
What I Didn't Like
At times I felt that Butler over-simplified the descriptions of the culture at the time. It was as if she did not want to do too much research, so she would skip over what life was like in the 1800s and reveal it instead by having Dana and Kevin feel shell-shocked when they got back to the late 1900s. The dialogue of the slaves and slave-owners was also a little too contemporary, in my opinion. Aside from using "Marse" as a title, the slaves spoke with essentially as clear of English as Dana did (although they frequently made comments about how white she spoke) and one could not tell the difference between Rufus and Tom's speech and the speech of someone living in 1976.
The premise of Kindred is fascinating. The idea of a black woman in the twentieth century going back in time to meet (and rescue) her white and black relatives from the early 1800s caught my attention immediately. Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, who is brought back in time with her at one point, and this adds even more depth to the plot.
Kindred does an excellent job of placing a modern reader into the mindset of what it would have been like to be a slave in the nineteenth century, treated as subhuman property instead of as an individual with aspirations and independence and true value.
What I Didn't Like
At times I felt that Butler over-simplified the descriptions of the culture at the time. It was as if she did not want to do too much research, so she would skip over what life was like in the 1800s and reveal it instead by having Dana and Kevin feel shell-shocked when they got back to the late 1900s. The dialogue of the slaves and slave-owners was also a little too contemporary, in my opinion. Aside from using "Marse" as a title, the slaves spoke with essentially as clear of English as Dana did (although they frequently made comments about how white she spoke) and one could not tell the difference between Rufus and Tom's speech and the speech of someone living in 1976.