Kindred

First published in 1979, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred begins with a startling declaration: a Black woman has returned from a journey through time without her left arm. The woman is Dana, a writer living in 1970s California, who finds herself repeatedly transported to an antebellum plantation in Maryland, where she must save the life of Rufus Weylin, a white boy who is also her ancestor. As the journeys become increasingly dangerous, Dana is forced to confront the brutal realities of slavery and the precariousness of her own survival, while her white husband, Kevin, is drawn into the past alongside her.

Blending the conventions of science fiction with the historical novel, Butler creates an unusually immediate encounter with the legacy of American slavery. Through Dana’s experiences, Kindred examines race, power, complicity, family and the ways history continues to shape the present. Widely regarded as one of Butler’s defining works, it is a landmark of speculative fiction and a powerful contribution to the tradition of the neo-slave narrative.

From the book

“Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.”

— Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

On Kindred

“A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail.”

— Stephen Kearse, The New York Times