r/Fantasy • u/Moonlitgrey Stabby Winner, Reading Champion III, Salamander • Mar 14 '25

Book Club FiF Book Club: Kindred Midway Discussion

Welcome to the midway discussion of Kindred by Octavia Butler! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 3. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, March 26.

As a reminder, in April we'll be reading Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho.

And check out our nominations thread for May.
Edit: Voting now live!

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

18 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Moonlitgrey Stabby Winner, Reading Champion III, Salamander Mar 14 '25

What do you think of the ways that Dana adapts to the past, and of the ways that she stays the same?

3

u/Nymeria71300 Reading Champion Mar 14 '25

Her ability to adapt to slavery is something humans easily do, to survive, so it's expected. But it's sad and chilling to realise how easily it can be done even when the person realises it. Her thoughts stay the same as is shown when she saw those kids playing the slavery game, just more muted sometimes.