octavia e butler make america great again

The protagonist, Olamina, has devised a peaceful philosophy called Earthseed that she hopes to expand to other planets - despite the fact that we can’t even stop destroying our current one. If there is any misguided optimism in Parable of the Talents, it is the notion that we can colonize other planets for the betterment of humanity. Victory is speaking the truth when the truth has become criminal, no matter the costs. The reality is that victory lies not in winning, but in persevering. This is a book for truth-seekers, not escapists. She presents humans as they are, not how she’d like them to be. She doesn’t try to tack on a happy ending or hint at a brighter future. Butler does not shy away from the depressing truth of human nature. This was honestly one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, and I am a connoisseur of the disturbing. It befits a country where the only defense that 40 percent of the population can muster is to shout “fake news” over and over like pull-string talking dolls. It is eerily reminiscent of the way revisionists are already trying to distort the facts of the January 6 insurrection, despite an absurd amount of video evidence provided by the perpetrators themselves. In perhaps the most prescient aspect of the novel, when the atrocities committed by the Church of Christian America are exposed, the church’s followers deny the enslavement, rape and execution of the “heathens” within the church’s network of “reeducation camps.” There is the heartbreak of those who have been rescued from slavery and trafficking turning against the ones who saved them.īut I think what I find most heartbreaking is the cognitive dissonance that pervades society. There is the heartbreak of destroyed families, both physically (the murder and enslavement of non-Christian and minority communities) and personally (the ideological divide that has pushed loved ones to opposite extremes of the culture war). I anticipated the gloominess of social and racial injustice and the ugliness of weaponized patriotism.īut in this prophetic 1998 novel, that presaged 2015-2020 America by nearly two decades (in which a demagogue becomes president, campaigning on the slogan, “Make America Great Again”), the gut-punches come from unexpected directions. This book broke my heart a dozen different ways, many of which were unexpected. More than four decades after its publication, Kindred remains an unflinching study of America’s greatest shame - and an indictment of a culture still unwilling to reckon with its past. It’s not merely the theft of another’s freedom, but the institutional structure that codifies injustice and the extrajudicial violence that enforces the status quo. The systemic nature of slavery makes it all the more horrifying. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.” “ wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves,” Dana observes. The atrocities are accepted as a matter of course, and for all his cruelty and ignorance, the plantation owner, Tom Weylin, is more dispassionate than hateful - at least relative to other slave owners at the time. The hardest part to endure, for me, was the banality of it all. It was impossible to put down, but at the same time I couldn’t wait until it was over. Kindred is the most horrifying yet pitch perfect novel I’ve ever read. She is educated and strong-willed - a writer who “dresses like a man” and is as much a culture shock to the people of the plantation as they are to her. However, Dana is the perfect foil for the plantation’s owner. She remarks, “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

It’s demoralizing, and to survive, Dana must endure the injustices and humiliations of history. Without agency in the present, Dana becomes enslaved in both timelines, simulating the forced relocation and dehumanization of slavery. This is a brilliant move on Butler’s part. She doesn’t know when she’ll be displaced, or where she’ll be taken to, so when she’s back in 1976, she never leaves her home or drives a car for fear of what might happen. Understandably, the antebellum south is a dangerous place for Dana, but the nature of her time jumps is unpredictable and equally hazardous. She learns that he will go on to father one of her ancestors, and it’s up to Dana to ensure he survives long enough to sire the child.īutler’s genius is on display from the opening pages, and Kindred is perhaps her most powerful novel. She saves the life of an impetuous and accident-prone boy, Rufus Weylin, who is the son of the plantation owner. It begins when Dana, a black woman living in 1976 California, gets transported to a plantation in 1815 Maryland. And it will not return them in nice condition. Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a novel that will hijack your mind, body and spirit for a while.

Octavia e butler make america great again