Kindred is a harrowing time-travel novel that is rightly acknowledged as a science-fiction classic. It is the story of a black American writer, Dana, living in 1976 with her white writer husband Kevin. They are moving into a new house when she collapses and is transported back to the America of 1815. There she meets one of her ancestors, Rufus, the white child of a slave owner. A boy who she will encounter many times over his life. She saves Rufus’ life but is still treated like a slave by the boy’s father. A special slave with medical knowledge that is useful to them, but she is still beaten and whipped when they deem that she has misbehaved. The novel very much explores what it was like to be a slave, a possession that can be used as the owner likes. It could be worked until it collapsed, beaten when it disobeyed, raped, bred and its children sold. It was not human, just a farm animal. The slaves don’t behave like farm animals as they create their own community. They look after each ...
The workings of Blogger are wondrous strange at times, Graham.
ReplyDeleteI hope you and yours are OK after the fires, and that there will be no more.
Yes Blogger is strange, now that I have set the comments to be moderated at least I get a prompt on the dashboard that I have a comment. I can't check my email to see if your comment registered because my email site has crashed.
ReplyDeleteAs for the fires, there is less smoke today. The temp is only in the high 20's, but when the heat returns and if accompanied by high winds, then the fires will flare up again.
I just read Sunday's Age and they had a map of Victoria with about fifty fires on it, 12 of them within 50kms of Wang, eleven under control and one not. I am glad I didn't read the paper on Sunday. The huge Beechworth fire didn't really get going until Sunday.