Kindred Gift Edition
Kindred Gift Edition by Octavia E. Butler, published by Beacon Press on September 20, 2022, is a reissue of the acclaimed time-travel narrative that explores the complexities of American slavery and racial reconciliation. In this edition, readers follow Dana, who is abruptly transported from California in 1976 to antebellum Maryland, where she must navigate the harrowing realities of her ancestry and the brutal legacy of slavery. The novel intertwines elements of science fiction with historical context, providing a profound examination of the past’s impact on the present.
This edition presents a compelling exploration of themes such as time travel, historical trauma, and the struggles for autonomy against oppressive systems. As Dana confronts the challenges of protecting her ancestor Rufus, the narrative delves into the psychological and emotional toll of slavery, offering insights into the normalization of violence and the fight for self-determination. With 288 pages, this English-language edition invites readers to engage with Butler’s thought-provoking storytelling and the significant issues surrounding race and history.
Official synopsis Publisher
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. (“You have to read them.”)
The New York Times best-selling author’s time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
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