American author Octavia E Butler's Kindred (1979) is a neo-slave narrative with a time-travelling twist. Part historical fiction, part fantasy, Kindred is a gripping novel which transports the reader from the post-civil rights era to the pre-civil war era and back again.
Soon it happens again, and this time Dana is in a bedroom with the young boy. He is a few years older now and has just lit some drapes on fire. Dana puts out the fire and talks to the child, Rufus. She learns that she is in Maryland and it is 1815. Dana has travelled back in time and across the country to this boy again. Dana is not safe here - a Black woman dressed in trousers at an antebellum plantation. Rufus takes her to the home of Alice Greenwood, a free Black woman who lives near the plantation. Dana realises that she is a descendant of both Rufus and Alice, and this must be why she has been drawn here. When a group of white men arrive and her life is threatened as she has no papers, Dana is transported back to her home in LA.
While Dana has been in 1815 for hours, Kevin assures her she has only been gone a few minutes. They decide to prepare for the next jump by fastening a survival bag to Dana's waist and reading up on history. The next time Dana departs, Kevin is transported with her. He holds a different status, as a white man, and they pretend that Dana is his slave so that she has some protection, as an interracial marriage would be strictly forbidden. Kevin's experience of the racism is starkly different to Dana's, and while he gains a level of understanding of what she has to go through, it will never be the same for him as his race and gender afford status and liberty. Dana soon figures out she is called to the past whenever Rufus is in danger, and ejected back to her own time when her life is on the line.
Over the course of the novel there are six journeys back to the nineteenth century. In each one Dana learns more about the plight of slavery and the intergenerational trauma caused by the treatment of her ancestors. The parallels between Alice and Dana, and their intertwined relationship, are well crafted. Dana is smart, empathetic and practical, but her twentieth-century knowledge is often challenged by nineteenth-century realities.
Narrated in the first person, Butler has achieved something extraordinary with Kindred. By interrogating slavery, she is also questioning racism, sexism and inequality in the 1970s. Butler writes in a straightforward prose, which conveys volumes. Like other neo-slavery narratives (for example Toni Morrison's Beloved, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes), Butler does not shy away from the terror and brutality of slavery and brings the two timelines closer together so that history is never far away. In telling the story via the fantasy element, Butler has created a captivating page turner where the reader is vested in what happens to Dana and the people she encounters. Highly recommended.
