Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

(New York: Beacon Press, 2004), 292

  • "We had so many books, we had to try to keep them in some kind of order." (12)
  • "The possibility of meeting a white adult here frightened me, more than the possibility of street violence ever had at home." (33)
  • "I don't understand how it can be happening, but it's real. It hurts too much not to be." (46)
  • "Rufus's fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home." (50)
  • "I hope not. It depends on whether anybody's made Daddy mad lately." (60)
  • "But then, a man who could look at his injured son and think of nothing but how much the doctor bill would be wasn't likely to be concerned about strangers." (66)
  • "He led the way past the main house, away from the slave cabins and other buildings, away from the small slave children who chased each other and shouted and didn't understand yet that they were slaves." (76)
  • "So she made Marse Tom sell my three. boys to get money to buy things she didn't even need!" (95)
  • "And I began to realize why Kevin and I had fitted so easily into this time. We weren't really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us and we were actors." (98)
  • "Talking back, he thinks everything I say is talking back. So I don't say very much to him." (102)
  • "My memory of my aunts and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them." (109)
  • "That's history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there's nothing I can do about it." (140)
  • "Sometimes it's better to keep the truth to yourself." (157)
  • "Slavery was a long slow process of dulling." (182)
  • "Everything is soft here, so easy..." (192)
  • "Maybe he'll never be as hard as his father was, but he's a man of his time." (242)
  • "He couldn't control me. That clearly bothered him." (253)

Discussion

  • home, what makes a home
  • survival and compliance/compromise for survival
  • genre
  • complicity in the system
  • mom: gave you a feeling of what it was like to be a slave
  • freedom and education
  • code switching
  • Parable of the Sower
  • Wheel of Power/Privilege
  • Power and Control Wheel

Topic: Novel

Source

Created: 2026-01-01-Thu
Updated: 2026-05-16-Sat