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Thursday Morning Open Thread - Reading Kindred [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-31
<drnick>Hi, everybody!</drnick>
Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. Join us, please.
Today I want to share about another difficult book that I read in the last year or so: Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It is a truly enlivening book, which manages to feel cinematic, subversive and romantic all at once. I was not sure that I would finish it, but in the end the realism of the narrative kept me interested through its foreshadowed terrifying and tragic conclusion.
Kindred was published in 1979, and it certainly has a bit of a retro feel. The central romance of the novel, between the main character and a White man many years older than her, is a little more simplistic of a white savior than would tend to be portrayed today. The central plot device of time travel is left mysterious and unexplored, in a way that might disappoint traditional sci-fi readers but which does a good deed for the narrative. Its plaintive emotional palette lacks the irony and meta-positioning that are more common in narratives about oppression in the last decade or two. But it does so in service to a more immersive and heart-stopping portrayal of the experience of American chattel slavery than any Henry Louis Gates historical documentary manages to convey.
The book is based around the main character being repeatedly transported back in time into the antebellum South, forced into protecting and rescuing a young White boy who is the son of a plantation owner. Her transitions from modern times to an awareness of her societal status as subhuman rings true to the author’s own struggle to navigate the legacy of slavery in her real life. It is a very heartfelt novel with rich and complex characterization, historical detail, and gripping portrayals of “silent but courageous survival”, emotional collapse and total sacrifice. I think it is often difficult to find a way to tell the story of American slavery in an inspiring way, but Kindred is very successful, especially within the values and standards of its time.
I had the course of my political evolution altered by the book Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority. The idea of being able to trace the pained, proud heritage of African-American culture through the slave trade and Jim Crow spoke to me as an obvious and unassailable criticism of race-blind, moderate analysis of race and class. But over the subsequent years, I generally found the fictional portrayals of slavery too gruesome to contemplate. Kindred managed to persuade me to see it through, perhaps in large part because of its explicit focus on questions of heritage and the experience of enslaved women that entail hidden battles of will and spiritual power.
Anyway — ladies, gentlemen, and others: have at it. Enjoy your beverage of choice!
Nina Simone — Feeling Good
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