Now this is a BOOK. I’ve wanted to read this one ever since I read Butler's amazing short story, Speech Sounds.

Before I review the book, let me introduce you to the fabulous legacy of sci-fi author Octavia Butler. Raised by a single mother, Butler was a quiet, introverted child who loved reading science fiction. Her interest in writing science fiction was spurred by the fact that most of what she read was written by white, male authors. Also, as a Black woman, she was determined to write science-fiction that was more profound than the unserious pulp of her time (the 1970s)—she wanted it to mean something and especially speak to the Black female experience. Kindred is a perfect example of a sci-fi book that is monumental in its scope and subject matter.

In this book, Dana, a Black woman, ends up traveling through time back to a Maryland plantation in the early 1800s. Every time her white ancestor, Rufus (the son of the plantation owner) is in mortal danger, she is jolted from her life in 1976 to this earlier time. She goes back to her time when her own life is threatened. The third time this happens, Dana is hugging her white husband Kevin, who ends up traveling back in time with her.

These trips are an ingenuous way for Butler to explore so many things related to slavery. The author wanted to create a new way to present first-person slave narratives and to explore how Black people of her time were wrong in thinking they could handle slavery with their modern attitudes. All that and more is expertly addressed here, as Dana sees the nuances of power, control, hate, and survival that permeate slavery, a history that she has, up until this point, only read about in books.

Butler's prose is spare yet direct. This book will make you feel all the emotions but also keep you flipping the pages as you wonder if Dana will ever get--and stay--home and how changed she and her husband will be when they return for the final time. Read this book--it's phenomenal.