Experiencing the Past Through Another's Eyes

There is absolutely no way that I will ever know exactly what it is like to live in the shoes of someone else. I will never know what it is like to be someone of another race, gender, or creed; however, I can attempt to gain a level of perspective into the lives of people different from me, although never completely. Within the novel, Kindred, Octavia E. Butler does just that, though she puts a little twist on it. She doesn't just attempt to show me what life is like for a black woman, but exposes me to the naked truth of the lives of black women in slavery during the first half on the 1800's within the borders of the slave state of Maryland.

The author creates a slave narrative, presenting it from a personal perspective that makes you experience the stings of the whip and the cries of the oppressed as if you were there. It's almost as if the author actually lived through the antebellum south. I feel that the way the author presents the story is so touching because she does it in a unique way using qualities of science fiction and fantasy, mixed in with the components of a slave narrative. You see, the author uses the idea of time travel to take a black woman living in California during the 1970's and throws her directly into the heart of oppression, living a life in which the outcome is not controlled by you, but by the authority and fear of the 'masters'. It is because we are allowed to experience what is going on within the story through the life of a woman who has never been enslaved, do we get such a shocking point of view.

Of course, the slave narratives of people such as Fredrick Douglas have the incredible ability to touch us, and allow us to see how horrible and inhumane slavery is, but the story of Kindred, brings us closer to the idea from the eyes of an almost contemporary perspective. On top of that, Kindred shows us a point of view rarely seen within slave narratives, and that is the female perspective. Just thinking about the things that African Americans were forced to go through during slavery, and not only then, fills me with a burning anger.

There are aspects of meta-fiction found within the book, primarily coming from the fact that the author of the story is a writer, writing a story about another writer experiencing slavery. I think it is also significant to note that Butler performed a bit of 'method writing' by visiting an actual plantation and doing her own research. Just another reason why Butler has the ability to present such powerful feelings through an issue that has stained the history of the United States.