octavia e butler make america great again

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.

God Is Change meditates on alternate religious possibilities that open different political and cultural futures to illustrate humanity’s ability to endure change and thrive.Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a novel that will hijack your mind, body and spirit for a while. Essays consider the role of spirituality in Butler’s canon and the themes of confronting trauma as well as experiencing transformation and freedom. The editors of and contributors to God Is Change heighten our appreciation for the range and depth of Butler’s thinking about spirituality and religion, as well as how Butler’s work-especially the Parable and Xenogenesis series-offers resources for healing and community building. They explored, respectively, what happens during a divisive “cultural war” that unjustly impacts the disenfranchised, and the rise of a fascistic president, allied with white fundamentalist Christianity, who chants the slogan, “Make America Great Again.”īut religion, for Butler, need not be a restricting force. Her prescient thoughts on the synergy between politics and religion in America are evident in her 1993 dystopian novel, Parable of the Sower, and its 1998 sequel, Parable of the Talents. Butler explored, critiqued, and created religious ideology.

Octavia e butler make america great again