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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred
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1199525

“_I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery._”

I wanted to love this book. I knew the slave narrative might be harrowing (though it’s not overly graphic), but it has an average GR rating over four stars, features time-travel dilemmas, has a strong, intelligent, kind, and practical female protagonist, and gives thought-provoking insights into the complexity of US race relations in the 1800s and, to a lesser extent, the 1970s.

It is a good and powerful, exciting and educational book. But something didn’t quite connect for me. I hoped that composing my thoughts would make me see it in a more favourable light - and it has. Perhaps I just read it too fast to digest it properly.

Kindred

One word, seven letters, but several interpretations, all with emotional impact.

* The most common and literal meaning relates to ties of blood: our immediate family. The kindred we can’t choose, even if we hate or despise them.

* But blood is too narrow to include one’s partner, or any adopted children, honorary uncles and aunts, or step parents. And what about children born to slave women who could never claim their father/owner’s family as kindred, even if they wanted to?

* So it widens to “kindred spirits” - our closest friends and allies, with whom we share attitudes, experiences, and interests. Regardless of biological parentage, a slave child’s kindred can only be fellow slaves.

* Ultimately, Butler’s message is that black and white (and brown and pink and yellow), male and female (and everything else), we are all kindred. One race: the human race. Race as a social construct. (See Live Science and Bill Nye.)

This is not a Christian book, and I am not a Christian person, but I was reminded of the message of Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan. The man who asked “Who is my neighbour?” was shown that the answer was everyone in need. That’s a tough message to apply, but given the turmoil in the word right now, it is as important as it ever was.

Plot - No Spoilers

The book is easy to summarise in a way that gives no more spoilers than the first three pages and back cover. Dana is a 26-year old middle class African-American living in 1976 LA with her white husband, Kevin. Somehow, she comes unstuck in time (like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five and Henry in The Time Traveller’s Wife) and suddenly finds herself on a plantation in Maryland in 1815.

This happens several times, over twenty years of 19th century time, with the usual issues and dilemmas of time travel, but that is just the mechanism for depicting the horrors of slavery, and the complex power and sexual relationships that result, as well as exploring the source of hatred (nature versus nurture), acquiescence, revenge, and the types and possibility of redemption and freedom.

Kindred is more historical and political adventure than sci-fi. It’s fast-paced and, despite the subject, quite an easy read. And the ending is satisfying, but not ludicrously sentimental or tidy.

Owning and Being Owned

In 1976, Dana is proud of her independence, having repeatedly fought to do what she wanted, rather than settle for what was expected. In the 19th century, she has to consider the terrifying risks and consequences of striving for even a tiny bit of independence. The power-play between master and slave can acquire aspects of Stockholm Syndrome.

Although the story is told by Dana and she is the central character, at least as important is Rufus Weyland, son of the plantation owner. The way his attitude and behaviour change as he grows up is echoed in the more recent The Help, though it is more complex here. As a small child, he’s allowed to have slave children as friends, even as his father buys and sells their families, beats and sleeps with them.

Gradually, Rufus develops an unrequited “destructive single-minded love” for two women that I never fully understood. With one woman, it’s sexual, so he repeatedly rapes her.

“There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.”

Of course, Rufus doesn’t think of it as rape because she doesn’t try to stop him and, more importantly, he owns her. So the woman endures, but “She forgave him nothing, forgot nothing.”

Dana sees how manipulative Rufus is, she experiences it herself. She sees the bad in him and occasionally slivers of good. She tries to enlighten him, but is remarkably forgiving when he follows in his father’s footsteps. More so than I could be, which is perhaps another reason why it didn’t quite ring true for me.

He’s of his Time. Does that make it OK?

“_He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper._”

A common debate on GR and in the wider world (yes, there is one, I’m led to believe), is to what extent we judge those in the past by the standards of our time.

* Should we cast aside books by people who we now know had hateful views and who maybe did hateful deeds?

* Should books about the past be sanitised and redacted to make them acceptable to modern sensibilities?

Dana is confronted by this dilemma in a more direct and personal way. She wants to teach Rufus to think of and treat his slaves kindly, but as his views become darker and more complicated, her opinion of him is ever more conflicted - exacerbated by the power he has over her.

* How much of what happens can be blamed on the surrounding cultural norms?

* Does a slave owner who beats relatively rarely and gently deserve leniency?

Identity: Colour, Gender, Social Rank, Ancestry

Who is Dana, and how free is she? In both periods she can be seen as, and is sometimes called, “a white nigger”. In 1815, she is assumed to be a slave just because of her colour, all the more inferior because she's female. But the fact she talks white and educated causes confusion, resentment, and conflict. And she comes to realise that even in 1976, she is not entirely free of her heritage, despite her relative detachment from it (though she has read at least some of her ten books about black history even before she has a specific need to do so).

There are similar questions for many other characters, especially slaves who consider running away in the hope of freedom (or death), those who stay because they want to keep their children, and those who trade privilege and suffering (such as sleeping with a boss they hate to have slightly gentler conditions).

I could write a whole review about her husband, Kevin: how he - and their marriage - is changed by her experiences, and his. But I won't this time; it's interesting and important, but secondary.

The other huge aspect is ancestry, and how that defines one's identity, both in terms of racial identity, but also in terms of character. What if you are appalled by who and what your forebears do are and do? (An issue those who research their family trees often have to face.)

Words and Language

This is a book you read for the ideas and story, rather than the language. But Butler makes her words work in a book that’s barely 300 pages: a single word title, and short, elemental chapter titles: The River, The Fire, The Fall, The Fight, The Storm, The Rope.

Of course, “the N word” is used frequently. Given the setting, it would be bizarre if it were not.

Human Pantone

The image at the top is from this short blog post about race:
http://www.laurassoapbox.net/2012/08/...
But it is actually part of Angélica Daas’ “Human Pantone” art project, which I saw on posters in Bilbao earlier this year:
http://brazigzag.com/culture/angelica...

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Reading Progress

July 11, 2016 –Started Reading

July 12, 2016 –17.29% "A fast-paced mix of inadvertent time travel and slave narrative, with a likeable heroine who applies her intelligence to the practical problems she faces."

July 12, 2016 –32.54% "The black person who is, in a sense, a castaway, has been reading Robinson Crusoe to a white person. Clever... or too clever? I'm undecided."

July 14, 2016 –67.46% "I'm uneasy about this, and I can't quite pinpoint why, though it's partly about Rufus. But it's a good twist on the concept, the lead character is strong and intelligent... I'm not even sure how I want it to end."

July 16, 2016 –Finished Reading

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