Kindred, Octavia E. Butler

"Kindred" is a strange book, but that might be expected from a science fiction novel written in the '70s by a black woman. Our heroine is Dana Franklin, a black woman writer, whose life is hard in all the usual ways, but which suddenly takes a turn for the worse when she is yanked into the past to save a little boy. Hour later, it happens again. It turns out she's going to the aid of an ancestor, which isn't all that odd a science fiction plot, but the ancestor happens to be a white plantation owner's son destined to inherit the plantation and the slaves that go with it. Dana not only doesn't fit in, she's assumed to be a slave, and a very unsatisfactory one at that. Horror ensues over time, and Dana's relationship with her white husband begins to warp as they are both changed by the past. A solid and compelling book of the kind that Oprah will undoubtedly get around to honoring and then force all America to read.
Posted by supersusie at June 19, 2004 6:55 PM