Kindred
Octavia Butler • 1979
Devastation Rating
historical injustice trauma survival
Our Take
A Black woman from 1976 is repeatedly pulled back to an antebellum Maryland plantation to save the life of her white ancestor. Butler makes the time travel work as moral machinery: Dana cannot simply observe slavery, she must survive it, compromise within it. The novel ends with an amputation. Both literal and not.
Appears In
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