Kindred
By Octavia Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
Woof, this one was heavy. I had some vague idea that Butler's biggest series was about vampires (unclear how I came by that impression since I literally shelved her books when I was sixteen and worked at a bookstore) and then I kept seeing this one pop up, and thought it might be new, and what actually happened is that this was published in 1970, and is about a time-traveling black woman, and Octavia Butler died in 2006 and her last book was a vampire novel (but couldn't have been the vampire novel I was thinking of), but bears absolutely no resemblance to what I thought she wrote. Anyway, this is to say that I had some vague impressions about what this was, but I was really not prepared for this to hit this hard.
I did find myself comparing it to Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, mostly in the sense that an under-prepared young woman finds herself stranded in an unexpectedly dangerous time period, although obviously Kindred's Dana is at more risk than Kevran was - except, of course, of dying from the bubonic plague. Also, that time period was not specifically dangerous to her, i.e., being a black woman on a plantation was a little more targeted than a white lady traveling through medieval England. But both books build tension and horror really well, and in Kindred, even though we open with Dana in the hospital with Kevin, and sans arm, I still found myself cheating ahead, trying to make sure that she didn't face too much awfulness.
So basically, Dana gets called out of time (and place) unexpectedly, discovering that she's being called to the side of Rufus Weylin, a young white boy/man in times of his personal danger. She's returned to the 1900s when she feels in life-threatening danger herself. While she may be in the 1800s for hours or months at a time, little time passes back in 1976. Her trips back occur in quick succession in the 1900s, although years pass between calls in the 1800s. Her 1976 husband, a white man named Kevin, is pretty fast to accept this once she disappears and reappears in front of him, soaking wet/banged up/etc. We soon find out that Rufus is Dana's ancestor, and she needs to preserve his life at least long enough for him to continue her family line. This is complicated, obviously, because she's a black woman and everyone who sees her basically sees "uppity should-be slave". For all of my lengthy explanation, it's a surprisingly straightforward plot in many ways: the core of the book is the character development and emotional beats.
Dana does feel some - affection, at least at first, which then turns into dependence (if only because he is her way out, both to her own life as well as from the worst of slavery in the past) for Rufus. Her influence on him wanes, as we see him becoming his worst impulses despite an early and positive relationship with Dana. How much can one fight against a society which says: "You can take" that which you would otherwise not be given?
We also have the interesting side-story of Dana's marriage with Kevin, which takes a (not literal) beating as well. Although he does accept this is happening, he doesn't understand her position, her feeling of responsibility and care towards Rufus. It becomes somewhat moot, as Kevin gets separated from her and stranded in the past for, oh, you know, like ten or fifteen years, until she can call him back again. I think it was meant to give Kevin the ability to empathize with Dana from having experienced it himself, which feels very intentional - although a white man in the 1970s may have some sympathy for the black experience, it would have been far more unusual for him to be empathetic. Or perhaps that's my own bias towards the past. The Civil Rights movement would have been a recent memory for Kevin and Dana, even if Black Lives Matter would not be born for another fifty years; but Kevin has a benevolent ignorance of Dana's reality. Although he certainly loves her, and is very worried for her (he comes up with some very practical ideas about how she can protect herself if she gets called back, haha) he has no trauma of his own, before going back.
In the end, Dana escapes, and Kevin escapes, and we're left with the memories. The idea of "What do we owe each other?" is one that winds its way through the book, on all sides. It's a somewhat simple book, in idea and execution, but one that has stuck with me for much longer than it took to read.
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