Kindred by Octavia Butler

I read this book in two days, it was that riveting. On Octavia Butler’s website, the book is described as:

“Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. [The book is a] deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day.”

My colleagues and I often have conversations about white privilege, especially white male privilege, and what that means for the social, institutional, and political structures of our times. Kindred helped me see a bit more clearly how the historical insult of slavery taints our efforts to achieve equity today.