Kindred

Recognized as the first black woman to break into the genre, Octavia Butler forever altered the white, male-centric world of science fiction. Kindred follows Dana Franklin as she is thrown back and forth between 1976 and the nineteenth century amongst her ancestors. Snatched by time, Dana’s journey echoes the experiences of kidnapping during the slave trade. Time travel, a standard convention of the science fiction genre, is redefined by Butler as she weaves a narrative that is neither nostalgic nor scientific, but a painful exploration of this nation’s past. Reimagining science fiction with the inclusion of race and a postmodern slave narrative, Kindred is quintessentially Afrofuturistic.

Octavia Butler

New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979.