"Kindred" is a very visceral novel and, while it is one of Butler's most popular (mainly because it is one of her most accessible novels - using themes most Americans are familiar with), I don't think it is one of her best (I nominate the "Parable" duology). I, too, had trouble reading it - but I was more disturbed by her coming back to her white(blonde?) husband bruised and abused from her time as a slave and how it NEVER colored her relationship or made her question the "master/slave" dynamic of it, even as her neighbors began to suspect her kind and caring (aren't all of Butler's lily white heroes "kind and caring"?) or spousal abuse.
The paragraph below is very interesting and thought provoking. I am disheartened that nearly thirty years after Butler published "Kindred" I know it is still necessary to conceal the color of my hero for as long as possible in my novel in progress. Sad. ~(no)rave! --- In SciFiNoir_Lit@yahoogroups.com, "md_moore42" <md_moor...@...> wrote: > On this reading, I wondered if Butler had deliberately made Dana a kind of Hari Kumar, a character who is white in all but appearance who is then suddenly forced to confront the reality of being judged by that appearance and forced into a very unwelcome box by it. If that was Butler's choiceand the concealment of Dana's skin color for the first thirty pages of the book seems to be another piece of evidence for thisI wonder if she might have done it to make it an easier identification for white readers, not to stir up present day issues but to get right to what she wanted to talk about. >
