Octavia Butler amazes me. She writes science fiction that is full of complicated ideas about race and sexuality that are completely readable. I’ll innocently start reading, thinking only to get a solid start on the book, and suddenly discover I’m halfway through the story. That isn’t to imply she’s a light-weight, however; her works are emotionally and ethically dense, the subject of numerous high school and college essays. A recent read of Dawn inspired a number of recommendations for Butler an...

This should be required reading in high school. I feel like if teachers used material like this, students would be a lot more engaged. It’s a fascinating blend of genres and such an interesting perspective with which she examines slavery. Very immersive and horrifying, but it really humanizes the past. Would highly recommend and am eager to read more from Butler’s backlist.

After reading Parable of the Sower, I had to go right out and buy Butler’s most famous novel Kindred. I was not disappointed. It is amazing that this book was written in 1976 and feels just as fresh and timely in 2016. Dana, a young African American woman who has just started a career as a writer in California, is suddenly and inexplicably yanked back in time to Maryland in 1815, where she must save a white boy named Rufus from drowning.This becomes only the first of many time traveling episodes...

Wow.

I had no idea what Kindred is about prior to reading it, I previously read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and thought it was marvelous, and Kindred seems to be her most popular work judging by Goodreads ratings. So buying a copy of Kindred without knowing anything about it was a no-brainer. I even deliberately avoided looking at the book's synopsis before hand, I just wanted to get to know the book as I read on. I hoped for a pleasant surprise, which I did get. This is only the second Octavia Butler...

A unique look at slave-era America thanks to a time-traveling twist. Should be shelved with the classics. Riveting from the first page and doesn’t let up.I’m always a fan of throwing in a little sci-fi, but here it really, really works. Most novels on this subject tend to look at race relations from one time period. Nothing wrong with that, but there was something wholly shocking and eye-opening about having these characters hop from a modern (1970s) lens to pre-Civil War society.This is my firs...

I wish we could read more authors like Octavia Butler, bell hooks, and Celeste Ng in our English classes instead of white men like Ernest Hemingway. I loved Kindred because it uses the science-fiction/fantasy genre to expose the cruelties and horrors of slavery and racism in an innovative way. Similar to what author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his book Nothing Ever Dies , the United States's education system often informs us of issues like war and slavery through a sanitized, depoliticized le...

Butler published this novel in 1979, it inexplicitly won no awards, but did become a bestseller and has remained popular since it’s release. Author Octavia E. Butler did go on to win the Hugo and Locus Awards for other works and was the first science fiction writer to be awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. I highly recommend reading this book anytime, but especially during Black History Month. I will also warn that it is an emotionally devastating story.'Kindred'

Before Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, there was Kindred, a grueling plunge into American slavery with a fantastic twist. One of the great time travel novels, right there with Time and Again and 11/22/63. Aspects of the narrative might be too agonizing for the tender at heart, but I was with it all the way, from first sentence to last.

Kindred is about a woman named Dana who gets transported/time-travels back to the past. She travels way back to the time when her great-great-grandparents were alive. This also happens to be a time of slavery. Dana is a black woman from the 1970’s who is married to a white man. Each time she is thrown into the past, she has to learn how to live and survive in this time while staying true to herself. 
I love books about time travel. One of my top favorite reads of all time (The Time Travelers Wif...

Reading Road Trip 2020Current location: MarylandOctavia E. Butler's biography could just break your damn heart.Her father died when she was 10, she had no siblings, her family was poor.She was a self-described “loner,” a woman who was tall and awkward and friendless. From the recent bits and pieces I researched, as I started this novel, I gathered that her romantic life was either private or nonexistent. (Was she gay? Asexual? Sickly?) As far as I could tell, she had substantial medical issues a...

4.5 stars “Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." Dana and her husband just settled into their first house together when she...disappeared.Like, literally disappeared. One minute she was there and the next minute she was rescuing a drowning white boy.And when she turns around, she gets called the n-word by his parents as they demand an explanation for a slave to be out and about like she is.And then she zips back to the future to her white husban...

On October 5, 2004, Octavia E. Butler visited my graduate university to give a lecture and book signing. I was really impressed by her. She actually spent several hours at the university, giving a public interview with one of the professors, then a short lecture to a large auditorium, then a book signing. I even skipped class in order to attend. The interview was really fascinating, where Butler answered questions about how she worked to write Kindred and how she felt about the characters and ho...

Audiobook/sync/ebookVoice narrator Kim Staunton was outstanding....Absolutely fantastic! At times I felt like I was watching a movie.... and Staunton had a lot to do with the ‘movie-feeling’ experience. She demanded my attention- I even stood taller while soaking in our warm water pool. The time travel/fantasy/historical fiction blend worked beautifully... kept me interested. Dana Franklin is a strong protagonist - a black woman married to a white man during the 70’s. Each time she is thrown bac...

“The ease. Us, the children… I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.” Butler is an author that constantly pops up on "Best sci-fi" and "Must-Read African American authors" lists and I can finally see why. This book may be my first by her, but it won't be my last. Kindred is a fascinating, horrific journey through a dark time in American history, combining eye-opening historical research with time travel.I suppose some modern readers will want to compare this sto

Octavia Butler is an amazing writer. If you enjoy reading SF/F, or even an interest in speculative fiction, you would like her work.Kindred, first published in 1979, would become her most best-selling novel.This is also a painful book to read because of its graphic depiction of slavery and Butler wastes no time in demonizing what was demonic. Describing the slave life from the perspective of a time-travelling modern woman, Butler’s strong narrative prose is in high form for a low burden – to ill...

“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 educ

Later Edit: I've thought about this review a lot and I think I regret the tone I used. I stand by what I wrote about the novel but I might have been too aggressive which is not really me. However, people found their thoughts in my review so it is going to stay. Please do not take this review as personal attack if you liked this novel as it is not meant to be. DNF at 50% (with some skipping) What came first, the egg or the chicken? What came first, the badly written book or the reading slump? Har...

This took me a week to finish, but that's a compliment.It's a brutal and grueling read, and it takes ages to get through because it should, but I appreciated every minute even still.I found this to be really unflinching and realistic in its depiction of slavery and what people are like, even those white people who are just "cogs in the machine" of slavery, even when the plot or a feel-good moment would have benefited from a break from that, which is an achievement (and I imagine something that t...

I remember the astonished fear I felt when I read Primo Levi in High-school and realized how easily one can go along with dehumanization in order to save his life. As much as we humans like hiding behind false truths, we're merely trying to go easy on ourselves and to maintain our breakable feeling of control. We don't control shit. From the moment I read Holocaust accounts, I've met a lot of people assuring me that these days wouldn't ever happen again because people would fight harder and long...