About this Event
Octavia Butler is finally getting the recognition as a genius she deserves, but how much Butler have you actually read? And what about the entire generation of afro-futuristic writers she inspired that now dominate the Speculative Fiction shelves at Loyalty? Inspired by the anthology Octavia's Brood, Hannah Oliver Depp and Chantal Tseng will read through Octavia Butler and her literary descendants! Chantal will pair a special drink to match the book each month and Hannah will bring the cultural context of the book's creation for discussion! Our fifth meeting will cover Kindred, perhaps Butler's most famous novel.
ABOUT THE BOOK
One of the 100 best novels ever published in English (The Guardian), most consequential novels of the past 100 years (The Atlantic), most essential books published in the U.S. since 1776 (Publishers Weekly)
Experience the novel that redefined American literature by the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower, MacArthur “Genius," and Nebula and Hugo award winner
"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."
Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor—because without him, she'll never be born.
Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors—she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.
Butler doesn't let you observe from a safe distance. You're trapped in Dana's skin as she navigates impossible choices: submit to survive, or resist and risk everything. You'll feel her desperation as she fights to preserve her humanity while the plantation's brutality threatens to consume her.
This isn't historical fiction—it's time travel that cuts straight to the bone of American racism. Butler pioneered the neo-slavery narrative that inspired Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Water Dancer. But Kindred remains unmatched in its raw power to make slavery's legacy feel immediate, personal, and inescapable.
You'll finish this book changed. Dana's story will lodge itself in your chest and refuse to leave. You'll understand, in ways textbooks never taught you, how the past lives in our present—and why that matters more than ever.
“Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).
“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.”
—N. K. Jemisin
Event venue & nearby stays
Loyalty Bookstore, 4203 9th Street Northwest, Washington, United States
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