Publications and Research
Document Type
Other
Publication Date
2-8-2019
Abstract
This paper investigates Octavia Butler's Neo-Slave narrative novel Kindred, which was first released in 1979. Her effective utilization of time travel altered the lives of a married interracial couple, Dana and Kevin. To write this textual fantasy, Butler incorporated the tool of time travel to revisit the Antebellum South in the 1800s. Scholars who have read Kindred, including Marianna Hirsch, Randall Kenan, Christene Leveq and Lisa Suhair Majaj, have examined the novel based on the notions of memory and its relation to remaking American history. They agreed that the memory of the past has a lingering deep impact on the present. As such, it has the ability to affect others’ lives and alter their realities, thus causing traumatic remembrances, ongoing bitterness and inner sadness. They additionally asserted the significance of revisiting the past to recover the memories of familial roots and history, as this can reveal ethnic identification and awaken one’s desire to remain connected to the past in order to cherish the present. After reading different critics’ evaluations, I attempted to evaluate Butler’s literary incentives and the cultural and historical reasons behind writing the novel. Here, I found myself inspired to expand on these notions of memory and further investigate its significance in remaking American history and re-defining the American identity. This groundwork asserted that Butler's usage of time travel does not only affirm the enduring legacy of racial discrimination and slavery in the modern African American personae, but it also resurrects an abandoned historical truth that necessitated a restoration of the African American identity. Octavia Butler's attempts to re-create this platform of historical agony evokes a necessary contemplation of history and memory as being emotionally disturbing and gut-wrenching. Nevertheless, encounters with the present can be awakening, momentous and enlightening. Additionally, in resuscitating the past, the present will be altered, reshaped and perceived differently. This paper argues that there is a significance between the past, the present, history and memory, which results in the cognitive and historical recognition of African American history, identity, and heritage. Furthermore, African American survivors, as well as modern African Americans, still endure the traumatic memory of slavery, suffer racism and gender biases, leaving them unable to achieve full recovery.