KINDRED by Octavia Butler (1979)

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - No one writes about & tackles the deeper philosophical & spiritual questions of the human experience like Butler does, with such unflinching, unapologetic, honest, & brutal vulnerability.

Apr 29, 2025

∙ Paid

“Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom. What had I done wrong? Why was I still slave to a man who had repaid me for saving his life by nearly killing me. Why had I taken yet another beating. And why . . . why was I so frightened now—frightened sick at the thought that sooner or later, I would have to run again?”
…I moved, twisted myself somehow, from my stomach onto my side. I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came.
See how easily slaves are made? they said.”

title: Kindred

author: Octavia E. Butler

foreword to the 2025 edition: Janelle Monáe

critical essay for the 2025 edition: Robert Crossley

foreword to the 2018 edition: Ayòbámi Adébáyò

published: 1979

publisher: Doubleday

genre/subgenre: speculative (historical-adjacent) fiction

additionally, according to Crossley’s critical essay, “Butler herself has repeatedly insisted that Kindred should be read as a “grim fantasy,” not as science fiction…” His essay at the back of the 2025 edition is a great discussion about why categorizing this book as “sci-fi” does a disservice to the story.

setting: California in the 1970s & Maryland in the early 19th century

main themes/subjects: chattel slavery institution, white supremacy, systemic patriarchy, misogynoir, environmental & sociocultural conditioning, teachers & elders, soulloss, coming of age in ante bellum South, fear & oppression, non-choices, moral relativism, corn plantation

representation: interracial marriage

tropes: time travel

summary/blurbs/premise: An echo of the tradition of “the “neo-slave narrative,” a fictional mutation of the autobiographies of nineteenth-century Americans who lived as slaves.” Summoned by “an irresistible psycho-historical force”, Dana is propelled back in time from 1970’s California to save the life of her ancestor, a white slave-plantation owner in ante bellum Maryland. “This inexplicable, nightmarish transit from one place to another is the first of six such episodes of varying duration that make up the bulk of the novel.”(Crossley) [From the novel:] “Then . . . Rufus’s fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home.”

At one point in my reading notebook I wrote that this story was basically Back to the Future but instead of going back to the 50’s & making their parents fall in love they’re going back to the antebellum south & keeping their ancestors (& themselves while they’re there) alive—body and soul. You know, just a bit higher stakes…

“What we had was something new, something that didn’t even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not have come from our being related. Still, now I had a special reason for being glad I had been able to save him. After all . . . after all, what would have happened to me, to my mother’s family, if I hadn’t saved him?
Was that why I was here? Not only to insure the survival of one accident-prone small boy, but to insure my family’s survival, my own birth… If I was to live, if others were to live, he must live. I didn’t dare test the paradox.”

my thoughts:

This isn’t really a book about slavery, though, this isn’t even a book about racism—this is a book about the insidious, entirely encompassing destructive nature of white supremacy, & of the insidious nature of systemic misogyny & even more particularly, misogynoir, to the point where folks who think of themselves as the “good” ones are unable to see the way patriarchy & anti-Black racism are so much more complicated & how deeply our environments entrench such sentiments into every aspect of our (i.e. anyone who is brought up in such a society) lives & our sociocultural conditioning.

The thing about Butler’s characters, however, is that they are so calm & wise in spite of the absolute inhuman situations in which they are put. So even though Dana is being jerked back in time without any notice or being given any indication about when (if!) she might be sent back to her own time, & is furthermore sent, as a Black woman, to the ante bellum South, the fortitude, compassion, & curiosity with which she handles the entire experience makes interesting & thoroughly engaging what could otherwise be overwhelmingly stressful & exhausting (though there are still plenty of tense & brutal moments).

I was also moved & impressed by how clearly you could see that moment where you weren’t sure which way Kevin was going to go… how far he may be absorbed into this world, even as “one of the good liberal white men”. Every choice every single character made, every word every single character spoke was so unsettlingly believable. & one of the most horrifying & impactful elements of the story was how Rufus was convincingly portrayed as being not redeemable. That was the most horrifying thing about the story. His upbringing in the institution had corrupted him so badly & utterly that he barely managed any humanity in his entire life!

It actually reminded me a bit of how, in Stephen Graham Jones’s Ledfeather, when the agent realized the cost of what he’d done & how he could never, in his own esitmation, deserve the “sacred” love of his sweetheart back home because he had lost his soul & without his soul, he couldn’t truly know or understand or feel real love. & that’s exactly how Rufus was: he lost his soul young because of how he was brought up as part of the enslaver class & every terrible thing he did was rewarded by that system & piece by piece, he was conditioned to lose his soul. That’s why he treated Alice & Dana the way he did because he didn’t know how to love without a soul—all he had left was the corrupted thing inside of him that once may have been a very strong & pure capacity for love.

philosophy: I’m sorry not sorry but no one—NO ONE—writes about & tackles the deeper philosophical & spiritual questions of the human experience like Octavia Butler does, with such unflinching, unapologetic, honest, & brutal vulnerability. Like yeah there are other authors doing these incredible thought experiments in (especially speculative) literature excavating these profound human experiences across time & space but somehow Octavia Butler does it right in the middle of your frkin living room, i.e. this might be just a thought experiment in a book that you’re reading from the peaceful relative safety of your current surroundings but she’ll be damned if you don’t learn a little bit about what it fucking feels like. Whew!!! At the end of this book I had to decide if I collapsing from enervation or in awestruck near-worship of what this writer was able to do.

Tangent: Which is why, tbh, I was kind of salty when I read Mitchell’s comments in his Introduction to Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness about how “Le Guin is more ambitious in her choice of experiments than most of her peers, and more assiduous in tracking the consequences of those choices.” Like yes ok he said “most of” but he should have imo explicitly excepted Butler because honestly & Butler & Le Guin totally overlapped (Left Hand was published in 1969 & Kindred published in 1979 & Mitchell’s introduction was written in 2019) & idk maybe it’s partly because I’ve read more from Butler than I have from Le Guin but… I think Butler’s work goes a lot harder in terms of taking those thought experiments to their deepest darkest places & unlocking the hidden potential (either for hope or horror) of the human species. When I read Left Hand I was intrigued & moved, but when I read Kindred I was disturbed & felt like my own soul was at stake/being tested.

i would recommend this book to readers who want an impeccably researched, truly original historical fiction (/speculative fiction/grimdark fantasy), & wholly engaging novel that asks the question: what would you do to survive if you were suddenly thrown backwards into a different, more deadly & dangerous time? this book is best read… with humility. My arrogant teenage self that read this book in highschool didn’t know a godsdamned thing. 😆

“You think someday he’ll write his own pass and head North, don’t you?”
“At least he’ll be able to.”
“I see Weylin was right about educated slaves.”
I turned to look at him.
“Do a good job with Nigel,” he said quietly. “Maybe when you’re gone, he’ll be able to teach others.”
I nodded solemnly.

final note: Next for me from Butler will be Parable of the Talents and Bloodchild.

CW // graphic depiction of the unconscionably barbaric cruelty of slavery, rape, suicide

season: Summer

music pairing: “Julie” by Rhiannon Giddens:

& all the songs from her Freedom Highway album:

Quotes, Expanded Notes, & Annotations…

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KINDRED by Octavia Butler (1979)

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - No one writes about & tackles the deeper philosophical & spiritual questions of the human experience like Butler does, with such unflinching, unapologetic, honest, & brutal vulnerability.

…I moved, twisted myself somehow, from my stomach onto my side. I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came.

See how easily slaves are made? they said.”

title: Kindred

genre/subgenre: speculative (historical-adjacent) fiction

Was that why I was here? Not only to insure the survival of one accident-prone small boy, but to insure my family’s survival, my own birth… If I was to live, if others were to live, he must live. I didn’t dare test the paradox.”

my thoughts:

“You think someday he’ll write his own pass and head North, don’t you?”

“At least he’ll be able to.”

“I see Weylin was right about educated slaves.”

I turned to look at him.

“Do a good job with Nigel,” he said quietly. “Maybe when you’re gone, he’ll be able to teach others.”

I nodded solemnly.

further reading:

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