Tompkins County Public Library Book Kit
Kindred
by Octavia Butler
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Book Kit Guide Index
Book Summary …………………………………………………………………………………. Page 3
Author Biography………………………………………………………………………………. Page 4
Book Reviews and Article…………………………………………………………………. Page 5
Reading Guide Questions………………………………………………………………….. Page 6
Read-A-Likes……………………………………………………………………………………… Pages 7 - 13
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Tompkins County Public Library Book Kit
Kindred by Octavia Butler
SUMMARY
"The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black
American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel
of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an
African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum
Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a
shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous
such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been
given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother."-Provided by Goodreads.
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Author Biography
Octavia Butler
Official Website for Octavia Butler
http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler/
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the
few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she
became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. –
Provided by Goodreads
******************************************************************************
Octavia Butler rejected genre constraints, yet she merits recognition as the first AfricanAmerican woman writer to achieve success in Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as
Mainstream Fiction. Science in her novels is often time travel, biology, or social science, versus
rocket science, astronomy, or cybernetics. The setting may be a complex alien world or an
unfamiliar setting on Earth, but humanity's misuse of intelligence to dominate others is usually
at the story's core. With lean, powerful prose Butler spins compelling narratives focused on
slavery, victimization, classicism, and racism. – Provided by NovelList Fiction Guide
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Book Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
/* Starred Review */ Butler is one of those accomplished science-fiction writers (Mind of My
Mind, Survivor) who tap out their tales so fast and fine and clear that it's impossible to stop
reading at any point. And this time the appeal should reach far beyond a sci-fi audience-because the alien planet here is the antebellum South, as seen through the horrified eyes of
Dana, a 20th-century black woman who time-travels in expeditious Butler fashion: "The house,
the books, everything vanished. Suddenly I was outdoors on the ground beneath trees" . . . in
1819 Maryland. Dana has been "called" by her white ancestor, Rufus--on her first visit, Rufus is
a small child, son of a sour slaveowner--and she'll be transported back to Maryland (twice with
her white husband Kevin) to rescue Rufus from death again and again. As Rufus ages (the
Maryland years amount to hours and days in 1976 time), the relationship between him and
Dana takes on some terrifying dimensions: Rufus simply cannot show the humanity Dana tries
to call forth; Dana, drawn into the life of slaves with its humiliation and atrocities, treads
carefully, trying to effect some changes, but too often she returns beaten and maimed to her
own century. And most frightening is the thought that, in the "stronger, sharper realities" of
Rufus' time, Dana is "losing my place here in my own time." At one point Kevin and Dana lose
one another (Kevin returns haggard, after five years working to help escaped slaves), but finally
Dana, fighting off complete possession by Rufus, kills him and that past forever--but not the
memories. There is tremendous ironic power in Butler's vision of the old South in sciencefiction terms--capriciously dangerous aliens, oppressed races, and a supra-fevered reality; and
that irony opens the much-lamented nightmare of slavery to a fresh, vivid attack--in this
searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1979) – Provided by NoveList Fiction Guide
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Discussion Questions
(Questions provided by NoveList Fiction Guide – see NoveList for further more insights.)
1. What is the significance of the title Kindred?
2. How is power tied to race, class, and gender in this novel?
3. Why do the characters so often associate death and freedom?
4. Why do slaves experience such self-loathing -- and how do they overcome it?
5. What does the novel say about love?
6. What might be the significance of Dana and Kevin both being writers?
7. How would the story have been different with a third person narrator?
8. What is the significance of Dana losing her left arm as she emerges—for the last time in
the novel—from the past?
9. Kevin is stranded in the past five years, while Dana is there for almost one. Is there a
reason why Butler felt Kevin needed to stay in the past so much longer? How have their
experiences affected their relationship to each other and to the world around them?
10. Discuss the ways in which the title encapsulates the relationships within the novel. Is it
ironic? Literal? Metaphorical? What emphasis do we place on our own kinship? How
does it compare with that of the novel?
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Further Reading
If you enjoyed reading the work of Octavia Butler, try the works of these authors or any of the titles linked
below.
George Orwell
Scott Westerfeld
Ursula LeGuin
Margaret Atwood
Marge Piercy
Sheri S. Tepper
Beloved
By Morrison, Toni
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Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding
novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as
intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and
escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She
has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where
so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is
haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose
tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with
bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved" is a towering
achievement.
The Doomsday Book
By Willis, Connie
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Awards:
Hugo Award (1993)
Nebula Awards (1992)
For nearly a decade, Willis has dazzled readers with her short fiction. Her
first novel, Lincoln's Dreams, received unanimous high praise and won the
John W. Campbell Award. Now she pens a sensational work about human
struggle and redemption set in the time of the Black Plague.
Publisher Comments
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For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in
humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the
diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman
traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant
painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location
where Kivrin would be received.@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt;But a crisis
strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her
fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear,
Kivrin -- barely of age herself -- finds she has become an unlikely angel of
hope during one of history's darkest hours.@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt;Five
years in the writing by one of science fiction's most honored authors,
Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her
understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the
ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human
spirit.
Exultant
By Baxter, Stephen
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When it comes to cutting-edge science fiction, Stephen Baxter is in a
league of his own. His mastery of hard science, his fearlessly speculative
imagination, and his ability to combine grand philosophical questions with
tales of rousing adventure make him essential reading for anyone
concerned with the future of humankind. Now, in "Exultant, Baxter takes
us to a distant future of dazzling promise and deadly threat, in which a farflung humanity battles for survival against an implacable alien foe.
The Invention of Wings
By Kidd, Sue Monk
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The story follows Hetty 'Handful' Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah,
the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's
eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be
her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years
of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a
feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself
to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters,
both real and imagined.
Publisher Comments
From the celebrated author of" The Secret Life of Bees," a #1"New York
Times" bestselling novel about two unforgettable American women.
Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd
presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the
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desire to have a voice in the world.
Hetty Handful Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century
Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her
within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah, has
known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world,
but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Kidd's sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when
she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her
handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five
years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each
other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt,
defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and
sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will
experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism
before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger
sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women's
rights movements.
Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the
record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real
and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts
danger in her search for something better.
This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with
unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through
women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will
leave no reader unmoved."
Mind Storm
By Ruiz, K. M.
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"Mind Storm" hurls you three hundred years into a ferociously possible
future where the mind has long since escaped the cage of the body and
roams free and wild and dangerous. Total, delicious immersion into a
world rendered startlingly real by white-hot writing skill." --Whitley
Strieber, bestselling author of "The Day After Tomorrow"
Publisher Comments
"The first in an exciting new sci-fi series ""that's being described as "Blade
Runner "meets X-Men "
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Property
By Martin, Valerie
Check Our Catalog
Valerie Martin's Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into
slavery's venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828,
the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty,
bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the
dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her
slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.
Exploring the permutations of Manon's own obsession with Sarah against
the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the
speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past
upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.
Someone Knows My Name
By Hill, Lawrence
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Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata
Diallo thinks only of freedom--and of the knowledge she needs to get
home. This captivating story of one womans remarkable experience spans
six decades and three continents and brings to life a crucial chapter in
world history.
Publisher Comments
Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South
Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In
Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of
blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia.
But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her
heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the
injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story
that no listener, and no reader, will ever forget. Reading group guide
included.
"The first in an exciting new sci-fi series ""that's being described as "Blade
Runner "meets X-Men "
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Wench
By Perkins-Valdez, Dolen
Check Our Catalog
In her debut, Perkins-Valdez eloquently plunges into a dark period of
American history . . . Heart-wrenching, intriguing, original, and suspenseful,
this novel showcases [the author's] ability to bring the unfortunate past to
life.--"Publishers Weekly."
Publisher Comments
wench \'wench\ n. from Middle English wenchel, 1 a: a girl, maid, young
woman; a female child.
Situated in Ohio, a free territory before the Civil War, Tawawa House isan
idyllic retreat for Southern white men who vacation there every summerwith
their enslaved black mistresses. It's their open secret. Lizzie, Reenie, and
Sweet are regulars at the resort, building strong friendships over theyears. But
when Mawu, as fearless as she is assured, comes along and starts talkingof
running away, things change. To run is to leave everything behind, and
forsome it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds
thatbind them to their masters. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of
tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and
dehumanization areinseparable and that love exists even in the most
inhuman, brutal of circumstances all while they bear witness to the end of an
era.
An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, withan
unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery."
The Windup Girl
By Bacigalupi, Paolo
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Awards:
Locus Awards (2010)
Nebula Awards (2009)
What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And
what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of posthuman evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi
returns to the world of "The Calorie Man"( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial
Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo
Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.
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NONFICTION
Twelve Years a Slave
By Northup, Solomon
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Gripping autobiography presents exceptionally detailed and accurate
description of slave life and plantation society. "A moving, vital testament . .
."--"Saturday Review." 7 illus.
Publisher Comments
This unforgettable memoir was the basis for the Academy Award nominated
film 12 Years a Slave. This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born
and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a
house and a loving family - a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged,
kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep south. These are the true
accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave - many believe this memoir is even
more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey proves
the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and
formidable of circumstances.
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