I first learned about Octavia Butler a few years ago when searching online for innovative novels and Kindred showed up on just about every list I came across. When I went to the bookstore, I had become so enthusiastic about her that I decided to buy not only this book but also Fledgling, and then I read the latter first after a coin toss. That was probably a mistake, because I disliked it so much that I put off reading Kindred indefinitely. I’d finally put […]
The Cellar Door is an Open Throat
Last week I went to a conference in southern California. I took Kindred along, hoping to have time to read a few chapters. My first day there, I sat outside on my lunch break to read. I couldn’t put Kindred down (except, I had to in order to get back to the conference). I finished it before I came home. I read most of it sitting outside in a comfy chair, in beautiful weather. The contrast between my life and Dana’s at that moment felt […]
Love during the American Civil War
Until she was thirteen, Marlie Lynch grew up with her mother, a freed slave and wise woman. After her white father’s death, she was taken in by her half-sister and has been able to combine her knowledge of herbs and root magic with scientific principles. Three years into the American Civil War, Marlie and her half-sister are working surreptitiously to aid the cause of the Union, giving aid to runaway slaves and Freedmen, taking medicine and food to imprisoned Union soldiers, and with Marlie sending […]
Nothing Harder to Go Through with Than a Vanishing Act
I’m of two minds on Underground Airlines. On the one hand, judging it strictly on its own merits, it’s an thought-provoking and interesting book. The basic premise is that the Civil War never happened, and slavery was never abolished. It still exists in the United States in four southern states (the “Hard Four”). The story centers around Victor, an escaped slave who was caught by the government and now works for them as a sort of bounty hunter, tracking down other escaped slaves. In Underground […]