⌚ Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review

He lived Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review a barrier Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review which they said no man could ever pass. Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review across multiple generations, Roots is a must-read in the current era, Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review no doubt will remain one for many years to come. In fact, Babel is named for the language at the center of the book: a Amoxicillin Research Paper, pronoun-free tongue weaponized by one side in a far-future war. What if you are appalled by who and Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review your Canda And The Underground Railroad do are and do? She travels way back to the time when her Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review were alive. The novel argues for the courageousness of people existing under unimaginable circumstances, as Dana makes compromises in order to survive slavery. Partly science-fiction, partly historical novel, it Mary Wollstonecrafts The Vindication Of The Age Of Enlightenment race, gender and class issues Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review the context of slavery Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review, and this is the complexity of this book, in two timelines, antebellum Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review and modern California. Taking one as Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review example, Fred Ward manages to be funny but also has to convey the more difficult side as Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review is forced to live with blame for the outcome of his mission.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler Book Trailer

Did you know Edit. Trivia The mysterious "fireflies" observed by John Glenn on his first orbital flight were actually tiny flakes of frost illuminated by sunlight. As the spacecraft orbited into darkness behind the Earth, the sub-zero temperatures caused condensation on its skin to freeze. When warmed by the sun on the other side of the orbit, the temperature change caused some of this frost layer to break free and to be illuminated by the sun.

This was confirmed by astronaut Scott Carpenter on the next Mercury flight when he banged on the craft's side, causing more of the flakes to break free and become visible. Goofs When Yeager makes the first supersonic flight, we see the plane's Machmeter going offscale because it only reads up to Mach 1. Although this seems completely silly because the plane was always intended to fly supersonically, it is in fact what happened. Quotes [first lines] Narrator : There was a demon that lived in the air. Alternate versions ABC edited 5 minutes from this film for its network television premiere.

Connections Edited into Waiting for Superman User reviews Review. Top review. A good humoured, patriotic telling of the men behind the space programme. Following the breaking of the sound barrier by pilot Chuck Yeager, the next barrier was space. With the Russians and America in a race to see who can get there first and be highest, quickest and longest in space, a group of pilots are selected to become the first men in space for America. However I am a fool as whenever I do watch it the time flies by easily.

Such is the appeal of the film that everything works and only the odd scene at the end drags a little. The story skips through the space programme focusing as much on the flights as it does on the men and their families. It also manages to be very light hearted and good humoured, which succeeds in making it easy and fun to watch. The history being told may not be well known by all I'm too young to remember and am also in the UK , but it is well told and becomes more a story of the men whose courage made it happen rather than a history lesson.

Given that so much hinges on the men being interesting and likeable characters it was important to have a good cast, and the ensemble assembled here really put in good work to bring the names to life although how close to their real personalities they are I cannot say. Taking one as an example, Fred Ward manages to be funny but also has to convey the more difficult side as he is forced to live with blame for the outcome of his mission. Moffat is funny as Lyndon Johnson and Goldblum and Shearer are hilarious with their running jokes. It is a very enjoyable and accomplished film. Not only does it manage to inform and entertain but it also paints a very good picture of the men who started and ran the space programme and the effect the risks had on them and their families.

All this and it still makes me laugh out loud! Three hours simply flies by. This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the CED would be scored. This information is now in the online CED but was not included in the binders teachers received in Excerpt for free-response question 2 prose fiction analysis from the sample exam in the CED. The course content is organized into units that have been arranged in a logical sequence. This sequence has been developed through feedback from educators as well as analysis of high school and college courses and textbooks.

The units in AP English Literature and Composition scaffold skills and knowledge through three genre-based, recurring units. This course framework provides a description of what students should know and be able to do to qualify for college credit or placement. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like. The AP English Literature and Composition framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to read texts critically.

Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. In , she is assumed to be a slave just because of her colour, all the more inferior because she's female. But the fact she talks white and educated causes confusion, resentment, and conflict. And she comes to realise that even in , she is not entirely free of her heritage, despite her relative detachment from it though she has read at least some of her ten books about black history even before she has a specific need to do so.

There are similar questions for many other characters, especially slaves who consider running away in the hope of freedom or death , those who stay because they want to keep their children, and those who trade privilege and suffering such as sleeping with a boss they hate to have slightly gentler conditions. I could write a whole review about her husband, Kevin: how he - and their marriage - is changed by her experiences, and his. But I won't this time; it's interesting and important, but secondary. The other huge aspect is ancestry, and how that defines one's identity, both in terms of racial identity, but also in terms of character. What if you are appalled by who and what your forebears do are and do? An issue those who research their family trees often have to face.

Words and Language This is a book you read for the ideas and story, rather than the language. Given the setting, it would be bizarre if it were not. View all 50 comments. Apr 02, Apatt rated it it was amazing Shelves: top , sf-top , favorites. I had no idea what Kindred is about prior to reading it, I previously read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and thought it was marvelous, and Kindred seems to be her most popular work judging by Goodreads ratings. So buying a copy of Kindred without knowing anything about it was a no-brainer. I even deliberately avoided looking at the book's synopsis before hand, I just wanted to get to know the book as I read on. I hoped for a pleasant surprise, which I did get. This is only the second Octavia Butler I had no idea what Kindred is about prior to reading it, I previously read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed and thought it was marvelous, and Kindred seems to be her most popular work judging by Goodreads ratings.

This is only the second Octavia Butler book I have read and I already worship her. Kindred is about Dana, an African American woman who finds herself time travelling involuntarily to Maryland in the early nineteenth century. It is not explained how or why this happen to her, the mechanic of it is entirely irrelevant to the story. The novel is about her experience of slavery in the past. Her fate becomes intertwined with Rufus, a white ancestor who is the only son of a plantation owner and who somehow triggers her time traveling trips every time he is in mortal danger, a situation that arises more frequently to him than to most people.

While there she experiences the woes of slavery first hand, including whipping, beating, degradation and humiliation. This is a harrowing and emotional read, I almost cry manly tears during some of the chapters. I never pondered what it may have been like to be a slave, it is not exactly a contingency which is at all likely to ever arise. However, Ms Butler - genius that she was - made me feel it through the eyes of her protagonist. The pains and humiliation of slavery resonates with me even though there ought to be nothing to resonate.

I kind of winced every time a stroke of a whip is described. This is not a comfortable read but highly engrossing and thought provoking. The book is very much character-centric, the relationship between Dana and Rufus is very complex and fascinating. Dana's husband Kevin who also become embroiled in time traveling and is marooned in the nineteenth century for years without his wife adds to her complications, his reaction to returning to the present time is entirely believable and again resonates strongly. The book reminds me a little of Connie Willis's excellent Doomsday Book , which is about time travelling to the fourteenth century and also a harrowing yet wonderful read, though the emphasis of that book is on poverty, hardship and diseases rather than slavery.

The involuntary time traveling aspect of the book reminds me of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife , though Kindred predates it, and Kindred is certainly not a romantic book. Octavia Butler was not one of those literary writers who try to avoid the science fiction label like the plague even while using sf tropes in their works, she has always loved sf and gladly embraced the genre see photo below.

That said, Kindred is also not science fiction. The author described it as a "grim fantasy" and deliberately did not put any science in it, it is described by some literary critics as a "neo-slave narrative". I did consider why the book was written as a fantasy or almost sf instead of historical fiction, then I realised that it was probably done so the modern reader can experience the nineteenth century Maryland through the protagonist's contemporary eyes, this makes the book very visceral. While the book was written to make the reader ponder some serious issues such as man's inhumanity to man, inequality and courage in an environment where you are made to feel worthless, at no point did I feel like being lectured to.

The author knows the importance of communicating through the story, and I was completely swept away by it. Whatever I read next will likely suffer from being compared to this book. This goes in my all-time greats list. Butler told In Motion Magazine in that a lot of the motivation behind her novel Kindred "came when I was in preschool, when my mother used to take me to work with her. The novel argues for the courageousness of people existing under unimaginable circumstances, as Dana makes compromises in order to survive slavery. Butler's own mother was a housemaid, and many of Butler's earliest memories were of the degradations her mother endured at work.

She told In Motion that witnessing the racism her mother put up with in order to bring Butler a better life helped inspire much of Kindred's message: "I got to see her not hearing insults and going in back doors, and even though I was a little kid, I realized it was humiliating. I knew something was wrong, it was unpleasant, it was bad. I remember saying to her a little later, at seven or eight, "I'll never do what you do, what you do is terrible. I think it was the look and the memory of the indignities she endured. I just remembered that and wanted to convey that people who underwent all this were not cowards, were not people who were just too pathetic to protect themselves, but were heroes because they were using what they had to help their kids get a little further.

View all 42 comments. Nov 14, Justin Tate rated it it was amazing. A unique look at slave-era America thanks to a time-traveling twist. Should be shelved with the classics. Most novels on this subject tend to look at race relations from one time period. Nothing wrong with that, but there was something wholly shocking and eye-opening about having these characters hop from a modern s lens to pre-Civil War society. This is my firs A unique look at slave-era America thanks to a time-traveling twist.

This is my first Octavia E. Which of her books should I read next?? View all 3 comments. This should be required reading in high school. I feel like if teachers used material like this, students would be a lot more engaged. Very immersive and horrifying, but it really humanizes the past. Jul 05, Thomas rated it it was amazing Recommended to Thomas by: Ninoshkka. Shelves: 2nd-favorites , historical-fiction , five-stars , fantasy , science-fiction. I wish we could read more authors like Octavia Butler, bell hooks, and Celeste Ng in our English classes instead of white men like Ernest Hemingway. Similar to what author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his book Nothing Ever Dies , the United States's education system often informs us of issues like war and slavery through a sanitized, depoliticized le I wish we could read more authors like Octavia Butler, bell hooks, and Celeste Ng in our English classes instead of white men like Ernest Hemingway.

Similar to what author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his book Nothing Ever Dies , the United States's education system often informs us of issues like war and slavery through a sanitized, depoliticized lens. Though we "learn" about these events, we do not recognize the cruelty and evil our country's past generations committed - and how we are also complicit if we do not act for justice today.

Octavia Butler's Kindred tells a gripping tale and reminds us of how we must not let the stories of our past happen again. Kindred follows year-old Dana, a black woman who lives in California and gets transported to the antebellum South. There, she meets Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner who will go on to sire the daughter who becomes Dana's ancestor. Dana is teleported back in time over and over again to protect Rufus from death, but each time she travels to the past, she encounters increasing amounts of danger and abuse that put her own life at risk for extinction. Butler creates a compelling cast of characters in Kindred. Dana, Kevin, Rufus, Alice, etc. In addition to imbuing Kindred with a fast-moving and surprising plot, Butler succeeds at showing and not telling the atrocities of slavery through Dana's travels backward and forward in time, in particular her forced journey to acclimate to plantation life in the nineteenth century.

Through detailing the pain Dana suffers and the pain she sees her fellow enslaved individuals suffer at the hands of white folk, Butler encourages us to consider the challenges of surviving in an unjust world, just like the one we live in now. Why is it that our ancestors, as well as a lot of us today, are so willing to look away from the evils of racism? How do we stay true to our values in a society that so often pits minorities against each other, gives power to those who disempowers others, etc.? Kindred makes us think about these questions without offering simple answers, providing proof of its thoughtfulness and strength as a novel.

Overall, a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone. I honestly feel ashamed at my younger self for not reading authors like Butler sooner and for buying into problematic portrayals of slavery, like Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I am doing my best to make up for it now by reading more books about social justice, by donating to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations fighting the good fight, and by having conversations about these topics, volunteering, etc. As a companion to Kindred , I would recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and giving to groups that fight mass incarceration, as that injustice serves in many ways as the slavery of our time. Thank you to Ms. Butler for creating art that allows us to see injustice and to fight it.

View all 12 comments. Mar 07, Julie rated it liked it Shelves: maryland , reading-road-trip , nobody-talks-like-this , in-living-color , thats-show. Butler's biography could just break your damn heart. Her father died when she was 10, she had no siblings, her family was poor. From the recent bits and pieces I researched, as I started this novel, I gathered that her romantic life was either private or nonexistent. Was she gay? As far as I could tell, she had substantial medical issues and lived with her mother, and died, far too young, at 58, of a stroke. Butler's online photo gallery. And yet. This is so extraordinary to me, my closeted sci-fi self has always rejoiced, just knowing that Ms.

Butler's work was still out there for me to explore. In fact, while I was researching titles for this figurative road trip of mine, I set aside my devotion to one of my all-time favorite writers, Anne Tyler, to give Ms. Conceptually: fantastic! A twenty-something Black woman, married to an older white man in the s, disappears from her new house in California and time travels to to a plantation near Baltimore, Maryland. The reader isn't given any more info than that. Dana, our time traveling protagonist, appears to be connected to the slave owners in Maryland, and, similar to Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife , you are asked merely to suspend your disbelief that this can happen.

Just one piece you need to buy into: Dana time travels and, unlike poor Henry from TTTW , she does not arrive naked at her next destination. What Ms. Butler imagined here is juicy and delicious. When her husband grabs on to her arm and travels with her on her a later journey, the plot thickens. What a crazy idea, to throw this couple and their modern ideology into the Southern cookpot. So much could happen here!! Not only that, the dialogue here is some of the worst I've ever encountered. Nobody talks like this to each other, and certainly not two romantic partners.

I did not experience one page of this read without thinking: this is a book. I'm reading a book. I never, not once, felt as though I had emerged into this world. This novel lacked authentic dialogue, character development, and depth. I felt like I was in a world of cardboard cutouts for characters and poster boards for scenery. View all 71 comments. Jan 20, Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing Shelves: african-american-lit , race-issues , historical-fiction , fiction , sci-fi-fantasy. Absolutely fantastic! At times I felt like I was watching a movie She demanded my attention- I even stood taller while soaking in our warm water pool. Each time she is thrown back in time she has to grapple with the devastation-slavery-era - vs. Oh my - the children and messages in this book are priceless.

The creative crafty storytelling, This was my first book by Octavia Butler What a beautiful passionate writer she was. View all 14 comments. I remember the astonished fear I felt when I read Primo Levi in High-school and realized how easily one can go along with dehumanization in order to save his life. As much as we humans like hiding behind false truths, we're merely trying to go easy on ourselves and to maintain our breakable feeling of control. We don't control shit. From the moment I read Holocaust accounts, I've met a lot of people assuring me that these days wouldn't ever happen again because people would fight harder and long I remember the astonished fear I felt when I read Primo Levi in High-school and realized how easily one can go along with dehumanization in order to save his life.

From the moment I read Holocaust accounts, I've met a lot of people assuring me that these days wouldn't ever happen again because people would fight harder and longer. This fallacious argument first forgets that it already happened again , and secondly it dismisses way too quickly how readily people accept awful behaviors if they become the norm. We can hate ourselves for that, but I'm not sure what we're trying to achieve when we forget that. There will always be people who fight, but they'll often be fewer than those who silently accept or participates in the dehumanization.

Now how can we change that is the real question. Us, the children I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery. What follows is an unflinching and very important look at what slavery really was and how its mechanisms worked , without, for once thank you thank you , an ounce of romanticization, but rather a complex but unforgiving portrayal of what many books would sell out as a Good Master ugh. This is what the world needs. I often mention my students in my reviews, but honestly, it's because I often feel that we ask more of children than we do of fucking adults. At ten, they're able to understand that their intend doesn't mean anything if they hurt someone : they still have to be held accountable.

The world needs to hear that as white people, we might not intend to comfort and sustain white supremacy, yet every time we buy into some romanticized version of slavery, we do. A slaver who falls in love with one of his slaves is still very much a monster in my book. So, what? The guy has feelings? He'll still buy and sell people as if they were furniture. He'll still make them work, hurt them, for his sole gain. What Kindred shows the reader is that no matter how easily we could feel sorry for said slaver - as Dana sometimes does - it doesn't change a thing.

It should never change a thing. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense. This novel is absolutely terrifying and it doesn't need any zombies to be : people are the monsters. White people are, and the fact that it actually happened in history makes it even more chilling. More, if we look at History as a whole, slavery has stopped in the US such a short time ago. And if Kindred reminds us of something that we should have never forgotten, it's how easily we come to adapt to - or make the best of, how horrible that can sound - such an horrendous system. In the end, we humans want to live. This ongoing thirst might make us able to do great things, but it also makes it harder for us to fight.

When are we starting to translate - and promote - these important books rather than the last NA by Colleen Hoover? As the first science-fiction novel published by a black woman, and as a fucking amazing book that will linger in my mind for so long, because I'm neither able to forget these complex and fascinating characters nor the message they carry, I'd say the world should wake the fuck up and read this book.

View all 8 comments. Dec 18, Joe rated it it was amazing. Before Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad , there was Kindred , a grueling plunge into American slavery with a fantastic twist. Aspects of the narrative might be too agonizing for the tender at heart, but I was with it all the way, from first sentence to last. View 1 comment. Feb 18, Christy rated it really liked it Shelves: audio , four-stars. She travels way back to the time when her great-great-grandparents were alive.

This also happens to be a time of slavery. Each time she is thrown into the past, she has to learn how to live and survive in this time while staying true to herself. I love books about time travel. One of my top favorite reads of all time The Time Travelers Wife has it. This was very different from that book, but I still love that aspect of the story. Kindred is such an interesting book. I have never read a book quite like it before. Dana time-travels back whenever her ancestor is in trouble. It can be days later for her, but years have passed in the past. It boggles the mind. She stole the show. Rufus is a character you loved to hate. Kindred is part historical fiction and part sci-fi.

I listened to the audio book and thought the narrator did a fantastic job. This is a book I would definitely recommend. View all 28 comments. Kindred tells the story of Dana Franklin, a black woman who is suddenly whisked back in time from to pre-Civil War Maryland in This novel is a beautifully elegant analysis of a not-so-beautiful period in American history.

I enjoyed how this book didn't shy away from being brutally honest. It doesn't seek to obscure the cruelty of the time period. It doesn't ask for the approval of its readers. It forces you to examine. We all like to think that we wouldn't have participated in that atrocious behavior that has stained our history. But would we have? Dana's excursions may suggest otherwise. To discuss history is to remember it. To remember it is to prevent it from repeating itself. Keeping the conversation alive is vital. I would recommend this book to everyone. I only docked half a star because I spotted one or two trivial inconsistencies. Otherwise, a marvelous classic and one I'm sorry I waited this long to pick up.

This review and other reviews of mine can be found on Book Nest! View all 40 comments. May 02, Dolors rated it liked it Recommends it for: Sci-fi and history? It's possible. Shelves: read-in Kindred is a hybrid novel, difficult to categorize. Partly science-fiction, partly historical novel, it addresses race, gender and class issues in the context of slavery but, and this is the complexity of this book, in two timelines, antebellum Maryland and modern California. Butler, far from trying to make sense of time travel and how it suddenly affects the protagonist of the story, uses the sci-fi device to transport a free Afro-American woman to a colonial plantation near Baltimore to explor Kindred is a hybrid novel, difficult to categorize.

Butler, far from trying to make sense of time travel and how it suddenly affects the protagonist of the story, uses the sci-fi device to transport a free Afro-American woman to a colonial plantation near Baltimore to explore human resilience when confronted with the vexation, humiliation and manifold forms of abuse, physical and psychological, of treating human beings as property to be used, misused and trafficked with.

The artifice of time travel serves the purpose of making historical barbarity a tangible and constant threat and to better understand the huge amount of silent courage required of those oppressed to endure all sorts of inhuman punishments.

Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review power-play between master and slave can acquire aspects of Stockholm Syndrome. She quickly realizes that Rufus is one of her own ancestors, teamwork in health and social care in Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review family Bible. Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review Details Dana's hands are similarly tied by family; Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review entire ancestral lineage depends on Rufus. Gloria Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Review wrote: Abolitionist: Harriet Tubman Home wrote: "I'm seeing a lot of white faces making snap judgements on The Driving Age that isn't for you.