Kindred by Octavia Butler is an outstanding sci-fi novel published in 1979. It has been around a long time but this is the first time I've read it. The story is about Dana, a black woman who is transported back in time to save the life of one of her ancestors. This is complicated because the ancestor is a young, white boy, the son of a plantation owner in the Antebellum South. Dana does not have papers designating her as a freed slave so she has some extreme problems. These problems are sometimes compounded and sometimes alleviated by the fact that she is a highly educated woman in a time and place when most blacks were prevented from learning to read.
Dana goes back and forth between her ancestor's time and her own. She may spend months in the past then return to find she's only been gone for a few days. Yet anything that happens to her physically in either time period remains, including scars from a brutal whipping.
In many ways the book reminded me of the song from South Pacific with the line, “You've got to be taught to hate and fear...” For this reason this book is relevant to the discussions we are having today about systemic racism. Butler presents us readers with people who were not born filled with hatred but instead conformed to the horrible norms of the day. This is true among both the whites and blacks in her book. Even Dana is changed somewhat after living in a society where slavery is accepted.
Apparently, Kindred is in pre-production for an FX series. That should be great but I recommend reading the book first.
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