Chapter Ninety-One: Kindred

I read Kindred by Octavia Butler on a friend's recommendation, and I'll admit I was a bit hesitant about it at first because it looked pretty weird, even by my standards.  While this book is labeled science fiction because it involves involuntary time-travel, it really feels much more like a work of historical fiction--and it is gripping.  It tells the story of Dana, datedly described on the back cover of the edition I read as "a modern black woman"living with her new husband in California in 1976.  She suddenly finds herself being pulled back in time to a plantation in Maryland owned by the father of one of her ancestors--a white ancestor.  She is called back in time several times to save her ancestor's life, and each time her stay at the plantation lasts longer and the threats to her survival increase.  Butler does not skimp in her portrayal of the horrors of slavery in America.  While I have read other books set on slave-era plantations and studied slavery in school, this novel really succeeded in making real and visceral what it might actually have been like to be enslaved on a plantation in the United States.  This book is pretty intense.  And as intense as it was to read, I was still left with the truth that living it would have been immeasurably more intense, indescribably so.  The time travel part is strange, and I would have liked to see more development of the relationship between Dana and her husband both before and after she gets called back in time--sometimes bringing her husband with her, but even with these minor complaints, I was generally hooked by this book.  I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a visceral representation of what it may have been like to be enslaved in America.