Kindred
Octavia E. Butler (1979)
“A Black woman is pulled from 1976 Los Angeles into antebellum Maryland — and the horror isn't the time travel. It's how quickly she learns to survive.”
Character Analysis
A Black professional writer living in 1976 Los Angeles, married to a white man, who has always thought of slavery as something she understands historically. She discovers she understands nothing until she is inside it. Dana is intelligent, pragmatic, courageous, and deeply honest — including about her own complicity. Her greatest quality and her greatest burden is her awareness: she sees exactly what the plantation is doing to her and cannot stop it.
Contemporary standard American English, precise and self-aware. Dana is a professional writer. Her narration is controlled even when her situation is not.