The Tzer Island book blog features book reviews written by TChris, the blog's founder.  I hope the blog will help readers discover good books and avoid bad books.  I am a reader, not a book publicist.  This blog does not exist to promote particular books, authors, or publishers.  I therefore do not participate in "virtual book tours" or conduct author interviews.  You will find no contests or giveaways here.

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Entries in Octavia Butler (2)

Saturday
Feb202021

Kindred by Octavia Butler

First published in 1979; anthologized by the Library of America in Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories on January 19, 2021

Kindred, Octavia Butler’s first and most widely praised novel, tells the story of a black woman who is repeatedly transported from Los Angeles in 1976 to Maryland in the years before the Civil War. Dana Franklin makes the journey each time the life of her ancestor, Rufus Weylin, is threatened. Her trips have a purpose: to save the life of Rufus, the white son of a slave owner, so that he can make a slave named Alice pregnant and begin the lineage that will eventually lead to Dana’s existence.

Dana makes about a half dozen trips to the past, one time bringing her white husband, Kevin, with her. From her perspective, some of the journeys last for months. She only returns to her own time when she experiences an intense fear of death. In the present, she realizes she has only been missing for a few hours.

In a time when people who live on the fringe continue to celebrate the Confederacy and its generals, when southern schools still teach children that the Civil War was “the war of Northern aggression,” Kindred should be — and is, in any schools — required reading. Butler’s description of slavery is vivid. The lives of slaves are depicted in the same detail as the lives of their masters, the key difference being the status of slaves as property. Butler emphasizes the ease with which their masters accept their entitlement to use their property as they wish. Slaves have no right to refuse orders, whether to labor in the fields or sleep with the master. Disobedience is punished with the whip. More severe punishments are inflicted on slaves who try to run away. The most troublesome slaves — those who won’t be broken — are sold to Southern states where life will be even worse. Education of slaves is prohibited because it might encourage them to think of themselves as equal to whites. Yet many whites are also poorly educated; Rufus can barely read.

Kindred is not just an indictment of slavery. Butler explores the economic and social forces that motivated the South to rebel rather than recognize that black people were entitled to the same rights as white people. Rufus is not an entirely evil man, although he is not a good man. He loves Alice but, after he buys her, he feels he has the right to rape her — an act he regrets only in its aftermath. He is more kind to Dana than he is to his slaves but rescinds the kindness when he feels a need to punish her. He struggles with whether he should free the children he fathers with Alice. Rufus is the son of a man who values slaves only for their ability to work and to breed children that he can sell. Rufus has not fallen far from the tree but progress in American history has been incremental. Rufus is Butler’s example of a white man who has taken the first baby steps toward attitudinal change.

When Kevin is stuck in the past after Dana returns to the present, Dana worries that the intervening years before they reunite may have altered Kevin’s view of race. That fear is a product of Dana’s understanding that society shapes perceptions and that resisting the pressure of racial peers to see the world from their perspective requires strength and courage. That understanding helps Dana fight to retain her identity when slaves mock her for dressing like a man (she wears pants) and talking like a white person. Yet she can’t do much to help the slaves with whom she lives — she understands the boundaries she must not cross — because the scant protection she receives by posing as Kevin’s property won’t save her from brutality if she tries to force twentieth century beliefs upon eighteenth century slaveowners.

The complexity of Dana’s character is also illustrated by the moral choice she must make when Alice — who was once a free woman — is prepared to die rather than continue living as Rufus’ mate. Dana can well understand that feeling, but if Alice dies without giving birth to the child who will be Dana’s ancestor, Dana will never be born. She encourages Alice to stay with Rufus not just to save Alice’s life, but for the more selfish purpose of assuring her own survival.

The Trump administration was justly criticized for advocating a sanitized version of American history that it characterized as “patriotic.” The curriculum advocated by Trump's Department of Education surely has no place for a book that reveals historical truth as effectively as Kindred. Americans can’t expect to move past racial division until every child understands that slavery wasn't just another form of employment. Flying the Confederate flag, memorializing generals who fought to maintain the institution of slavery, and whitewashing American history are not the acts of patriots. An education grounded in American exceptionalism rather than the truth of America's past is founded on dishonesty and exclusion. Every student — and every adult — who gets a sense of the true meaning of slavery by reading Kindred will have a deeper understanding of how racial division continues to be shaped by dehumanizing attitudes that were widespread in the years before the Civil War.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Friday
Oct172014

Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

Published by Open Road Media on June 24, 2014

Until her death in 2006, Octavia Butler was one of the jewels of science fiction. She was primarily a novelist. This volume collects two early works of her short fiction, although the first one is long enough to categorize as a novella. The important themes she explores in these excellent stories are representative of those she tackled in her longer work.

"A Necessary Being" imagines a caste-based alien society divided among hunters, judges, fighters, artisans, and other groups. The color-changing aliens are particularly adept at camouflage. Their empire has splintered into tribes. The leader of each tribe is a Hao, an individual of superior strength and abilities. Since the Hao are rare, tribes sometimes kidnap a Hao from another tribe with the hope that the Hao will eventually be assimilated into their tribal society. Against that intricate backdrop, a young Hao and the judge and hunter who accompany him face a dangerous encounter with another tribe. The story is in some ways a clever allegory of racial differences, where skin tone determines value in society, and of slavery and the forced assimilation that follows from it. It is also an insightful story about war and diplomacy as conflicting solutions to political conflict.

Shorter and slightly less compelling, "Childfinder" is told from the point of view of Barbara, a black woman who has the ability to detect nascent psionic ability in children. She has left the Organization to help black kids develop their psi talents in ways and for reasons the Organization doesn't appreciate. This is a story about how race divides society and how thoughts that should have the potential to unify are suppressed by oppressors who want to hold onto power.

Neither story has been previously published. "Childfinder" was purchased for The Last Dangerous Visions, the legendary Harlan Ellison anthology that never made it to publication. It's good to see these stories finding the audience they deserve.

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