Kindred

The book Kindred, written by Octavia Butler is about a black woman who ends up traveling through time to the slave driven south. This proved to be very difficult but she had to survive it to save Rufus, the man who would one day father her ancestor, thus saving her future existence. Dana travels through time at undetermined moments for undetermined amounts of time, this happens three times throughout the story, each time longer than the last. On her first trip she makes it back to her own time in a few minutes, staring down the barrel of a shotgun. But when she gets back to her time, her white husband Kevin said it had been only a few seconds. A few hours later she is taken back again when the Rufus is playing with fire. Again Dana is taken back to her own time, but only when she is about to die. This continues to happen as Rufus comes close to death himself and Dana is always there to save him. When in the south Dana has to be a slave on the plantation were Rufus is just so she can make sure he is safe. Dana learns and endures everything that her black ancestors went through. Dana does hard manual labor, sleeps in the attic, and gets whipped.
On one of her trips Kevin grabs hold of her and is taken back to the south with her. But they are separated and when Dana goes home, Kevin is nowhere to be found. What is 5 years for Kevin is just 8 days for Dana, but she returns to save him. While in the south the daughter who is to be an ancestor to Dana is born. Now she knows that she will live and on her last time in the south she kills Rufus when he attempts to take advantage of her. Dana is back in her own time, in her own place, with an incredible experience that if she told would leave her in a mental institution

As stated, in the story, Dana is taken to the south whenever Rufus is in trouble. Kevin stays in their time until he grabs Dana as she is transporting. Which inevitably shows that being white and male, he has a choice in what he does but Dana, a black woman has absolutely no choice when she comes or goes. During slavery, blacks couldn’t do anything and whites had all the power, which is shown quite obviously in this story. Dana can’t do the things she has come to take advantage of as simple freedoms in her time, without horrible repercussions from her white master, Rufus’s father. However, Kevin doesn’t have nearly the trouble Dana does, because he is white in a white driven time. Both in the slavery past and their own time Kevin has the upper hand, he can make choices, has power and freedom. But Dana has none of those, at least not in the past.

I liked Kindred it was very interesting, probably not something I would choose on my own free will though. Even so, I am glad I read it; I learned so much from it. Just like everyone else I knew the facts of slavery before, but reading it like this gave me a completely different perspective. When I read I put myself in the story and by doing so, I, in a way, got to experience what it was like to be a slave. The story was so vivid and descriptive it was very easy to do so.