Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
264 pages
Published 1979
Read from July 14 to July 15
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
A methodical, quietly harrowing examination of the infernal institution of slavery, and how it deadens the humanity of everyone bound to its culture. Or anyone it touches, really. At times the structure of Kindred can feel like it was built around a checklist of horrors, with situations created seemingly for little reason beyond forcing the narrator to experience a new facet of slave existence. The narrator's white husband's initial "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be" ignorance and apologia, and the slave owner's "Why are you still upset about slavery a hundred years later?" dismissiveness, could almost be sociology course strawmen (if such viewpoints weren't so ubiquitous as to be considered "reasonable" and "centrist" positions to this day, and thus not strawman arguments at all). But Butler's matter-of-fact approach to depicting those horrors -- and the insidious disquiet of how readily one might let go of pride, dignity, and freedom itself to submit, adapt, and conform and thereby avoid punishment, how readily one might even begin to defend the indefensible -- sinks steadily into you, numbing until the lash bites or the knife sinks in.
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