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Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

By Octavia E. Butler

Release Date: 1997-07-20

Genre: Fiction & Literature

4.5 (1,556 ratings)
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NEW FOREWORD BY JANELLE MONÁE

Experience the time travel science fiction classic from the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo Awards.

A modern Black woman is pulled through time to face the horrors of slavery in this “Great American Novel” about racism, sexism, and white supremacy—then and now (The Atlantic).

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).

“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.”
—N. K. Jemisin

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

By Octavia E. Butler

Release Date: 1997-07-20

Genre: Fiction & Literature

4.5 (1,556 ratings)
Read Download
NEW FOREWORD BY JANELLE MONÁE

Experience the time travel science fiction classic from the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo Awards.

A modern Black woman is pulled through time to face the horrors of slavery in this “Great American Novel” about racism, sexism, and white supremacy—then and now (The Atlantic).

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).

“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.”
—N. K. Jemisin

More by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred

Parable of the Sower

Dawn

Fledgling

Parable of the Talents

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Wild Seed

Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Adulthood Rites

Imago

Mind of My Mind

Clay's Ark

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

Bloodchild and Other Stories

Patternmaster

Bloodchild and Other Stories

The Complete Lilith's Brood Series

Parable of the Talents

La parĂĄbola del sembrador

Legami di sangue

Die Parabel vom SĂ€mann

Parentesco

Xenogenesis

Die Parabel der Talente

La sera, il giorno e la notte

A magvetƑ pĂ©ldĂĄzata

Verbunden

A talentumok példåzata

Hajnal

A talentumok példåzata

La parabola del seminatore

Lignelsen om sÄningen

La estirpe de Lilith (Trilogía Xenogénesis)

Wilde Saat

SlĂŠgtskab

RokonsĂĄg

Átvåltozås

La parĂĄbola de los talentos

Lignelsen om talenterne

A magvetƑ pĂ©ldĂĄzata

Przypowieƛć o siewcy

Verbonden

Alba

Hibridek

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