![]() ![]() In a departure from other time-travel stories, characters from 1819 are semi-aware of Dana’s unusual status - she often disappears before their eyes just as she is about to be killed in their time (which is the only explanation given as the mechanism for Dana to return to the present**) and then returns, some years later from their point of view, looking about the same age. This lens we get through the reactions of Dana, a wry and perceptive 20th-century African American woman, as she learns how it feels to be treated as sub-human property (though she is still more privileged than the actual slaves of Weylin’s plantation). The element of time travel distinguishes Kindred from both historical fiction and first-person slave narrative by allowing readers to witness the full horrors of slavery in the nineteenth century, while figuratively acknowledging its continued specter in present-day America. She returns permanently to 1976, (mostly) intact, but no character, black or white, is left unscarred. Ultimately, the conflict between Rufus’s slave-master mentality and Dana’s autonomy becomes impossible to reconcile, and Dana must kill her own ancestor in order to survive. Relationships within and between members of different racial/class backgrounds, rather than the fantastical plot or even the historical aspect of the setting, become the heart of the story.īutler probes into the painful and complicated implications of lived history (not the watered-down accounts in textbooks or what Dana calls “television and movies, the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs… and their well-rehearsed screams” *) on Dana’s relationship with other slaves, with her husband Kevin, and most importantly, with her future great-grandfather, Rufus Weylin, a man who comes across as alternately sympathetic and monstrous, a product of his time. Butler relegates the method and manner of time travel to the background of the novel and focuses on the repercussions, both personal and social, of the meeting of characters from 18. ![]() However, Kindred unfolds in a manner that is anything but clichéd. ![]() And I’m sure that I’ve read other books in which the protagonist is called upon, in a bizarre paradox, to ensure the survival of a future ancestor. ![]() Time travel in a fantasy novel-a cliché? Certainly the device of time travel as a way to “literally” explore the past has been used before (one example I can think of is The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen ). However, the beginning of Kindred immediately alerts the reader to the supernatural element that drives the novel, i.e., the fact that Dana is somehow transported multiple times from 1976 Los Angeles to 1819 Maryland to save the life of a white child, who later becomes a slaveowner and Dana’s ancestor. The main character, Dana, is an African American woman and struggling writer who has just moved into a new apartment with her white husband, Kevin. This isn’t to mean that Butler relies on fantastical tropes or clichés on the contrary, her works might seem to stray far from the conventional ideas of the sci-fi/fantasy genre at first glance.īutler’s self-termed “grim fantasy” novel, Kindred, is one of her more “realist” works in that the story takes place in our world (albeit circa 1976). Rather, she masterfully employs the unique playing field of the fantasy genre to (paradoxically) render more visible the reality of social injustice. “Her novels pointedly expose various chauvinisms (sexual, racial, and cultural), are enriched by a historical consciousness… and enact struggles for personal freedom and cultural pluralism,” writes Robert Crossley in an introduction to one of her books (xvii).Īcademic analysis aside, Butler’s works are highly personal and nuanced in their dealings with society’s “chauvinisms,” and they should not be read merely as political allegories. In her own stories, Butler made use of the genre to better explore its potential as a means for social commentary and possibility. Butler, an African American woman, grew up reading science fiction in an era when sci-fi was dominated by white male authors writing for an overwhelmingly white male audience. Butler is rightfully known as one of science fiction’s most acclaimed writers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |