Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

CN for entire review: Racism, Rape, Slavery

Best for: Really anyone. I don’t think you need to be into graphic novels or science fiction to enjoy this work.

In a nutshell: Somehow Dana — a young Black woman living with her white husband in 1976 — ends up being transported back to the mid-1800s when a young son of a slave master fears death. Without warning, she is then transported back to 1776. This cycle continues, and times including her husband.

Line that sticks with me: “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.” (p 89)

Why I chose it: My husband received this as a gift this year and thought I would also enjoy it.

Review: This was an intense read, possibly made more intense by the portrayal of the images associated with the it. In a traditional novel, we imagine the scenes. And its possible what we imagine is more dramatic than, say, what might end up in a film adaptation. But with this graphic novel format, the images showing the whippings, the attempted rapes, the horror, are all quite real.

Below are spoilers, as they were hard to avoid in the areas I’m most interested in exploring.

Dana’s relationship with Rufus — the boy, then teen, then man who she is connected to — is complicated. Saving his life often means saving her own, but keeping him alive may mean other things, like the continued mistreatment of other humans. Yet if she kills him before he issues free papers for the slaves, all she does is risk those slaves being sold to yet another white person. Dana has some sympathy for Rufus at time, and the reader can sometimes see that perhaps there is a grain of humanity in him, but then he refuses to embrace that grain and continues along the path his dead slave-owning father led him down.

Her relationship to the slaves on the plantation is also complicated. She doesn’t speak like them, she can read and write, and she gets some preferential treatment that keeps her from the harder labor in the fields. But she still gets whipped, and has her life threated. She has to ‘remember her place’ and try to figure out how to help the slaves without putting their lives — or her own — at risk.

I’ve don’t believe I’ve finished any of Ms. Butler’s books before. I believe I started one for a book club but didn’t connect. This one, however, I couldn’t put down. The science fiction is there for sure, but it isn’t the main focus. Yes, it’s about woman who gets pulled into the past without control, and then returned seemingly beyond her control. Time passes in the past but when she returns, minutes or hours have passed in the present day. We don’t know how the mechanic works, and we never find out (we do learn the why, sort of). And yes, there is a level of tension in terms of when will she get pulled back next, and can she return before she is hurt badly. But it isn’t the main point.

The main point is, as I see it, survival. How does one survive in this time and place — Maryland, during the slavery era of the U.S. — when one has no experience of it? And how does one survive when one does? Is there any complexity to slaveholders, or are they all 100% evil? Does “product of their time” mean anything? Is it an excuse, or simply an explanation? How does a slave survive? How does a free Black person survive? How does anyone thrive?

I do think we probably lose a few things in the adaptation to graphic novel, which is what kept me from giving this four stars. Regardless, I’m definitely glad that I read this, and I’ll be thinking on it for awhile.

Also — Cannonball!

I have never read a graphic novel adaptation before so I thought I’d try it out. I read this book rather quickly and I didn’t really enjoy only the dialogue from the caracters. Something was missing. I don’t think I would recommend this, perhaps the novel is better.

First of all, I still haven't read the novel Kindred, so I have no idea how they compare. It, along with the rest of Butler's books that I haven't already read, is of course on my TBR list. I've gone back and forth on whether I should read the novel before the graphic novel, but when I bumped into this at the library I gave in.This is a difficult book. What if, for unclear reasons, you had to keep going back in time to save the life of your racist asshat ancestor in order for you to exist? And to be perfectly clear, the you here refers to a black woman, and the ancestor is a slave owner in pre-war South?I think that I am glad that I encountered this book first in graphic novel format. I think the "watching something happen" level of empathy must be less painful than the "seeing the events directly through the narrator's eyes" level of empathy, and for that I'm grateful. If possible. I'm even more interested in the novel now, but I'm glad to have a better idea what to expect going in.

I really enjoyed the creative novel and the story, but it was not easy reading it through Scribd as the text boxes were to small and I couldn't zoom in.

Raw but real! Fascinating to read and learn about the true history of slavery back the in the states.

meh, ending wasnt very good, not much action throughout the whole book, long and drawn out , meh

Wow ....This is a first for me. It was very informative.

I read the original novel first, and in my opinion, the story does lose a fair bit of its subtlety and elegance in the translation to graphic novel. Still, this adaptation is very loyal to the original; the rawness and potency of its message remain undiluted. An increase in accessibility for Butler's work is well worth celebrating, and if you needed a reminder of why, the glowing introduction by Nnedi Okorafor provides it.

A young black woman in the 1970s gets unexpectedly and inexplicably time-travelled to a slave plantation in Maryland in the early 1800s. She meets her ancestors, who are not who she thought they were, and has to somehow manage to survive as a black woman long before the abolition of slavery without going crazy. She periodically pops back to the 1970s just long enough to recover before being sent back, sometimes with her white husband in tow.I have not read Kindred before, but this newly released graphic novel adaptation seemed as good an introduction as any. The illustrations are wonderful; they convey the dirty, bleak surroundings without being overwhelming.One of the most interesting aspects to me was the setting of the 1810s instead of the 1860s. There are tons of books, movies, and TV about slaves just before the start of the Civil War, with the taste of freedom in the air. But those are white-person-friendly stories, where slavery only exists for a small amount of time before nice white people come along and set everyone free. That hope does not exist for these characters. Abraham Lincoln is only an infant at this time, and Harriet Tubman hasn't been born yet. This story pulls no punches with how brutal life was for the slaves, how different groups of slaves felt about each other, and the dynamics of interracial relationships both back then and in the 1970s. I highly recommend it, whether you've read the original or not.

I've read several of her books in the past, but I've never been an Octavia E. Butler fan. It's been a long time since I've read her work though, and I always had a nagging impulse that I should go back and try to re-read some of her stuff, so I welcomed this graphic novel adaptation as a way to dip my toe back in the water. This is either a very bad adaptation or I've been too generous in my evaluation that Butler's work was okay but mostly forgettable. As presented here, Kindred is a dreary mess full of character's acting awfully. Most unpleasant in story and art. The art is blocky, scratchy and features a distracting overlay of white lines whose purpose, I can only guess, is to somehow accent the inkwork.

This would be really cool if it wasn't impossible to read. The text is way to small. I can barely even see the pictures and this app does not have an option to zoom in. I have to read everything in large print. There is no way I would ever be able to read this even on a bigger screen.

*reviewed from uncorrected egalley*

graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's time travel/slavery novel. Excellent storytelling and illustrations, and of course the story is A . Very well done.

Well. If I'm going to be stranded convalescing on the couch, I might as well do it gripped by this fairly superb adaptation. What a terrific and horrifying story. The art didn't always gel with me, but Duffy and Jennings did the novel justice. It must have been an enormous undertaking on so many levels.

It took a bit to get into kindred. It was very slow going and I felt like I would’ve preferred the novel to the graphic novel because it was a bit hard to understand what was going on. The more you read the more of the story envelopes you and makes you want to continue. Why is this woman going back in time? How come fear and pain keeps taking her back to this one child? Why does time pass in merely seconds/minutes/hours in modern time but could be years in historical time? Why do things go back-and-forth with them like bags and knives and whips and lashes and marks? The graphics are phenomenal . The artwork is amazing and this book gives you a feeling of real history. The story is so complete I don’t feel the need to read the novel but I think eventually I probably will. I understand why this is one so many awards why it’s been on so many best of the best lists. It deserves it and it’s brought new people to the world of Octavia Butler. Definitely a great read that I will recommend to others.