The Bestselling Novel: Currents in American History and Culture

African American Women in the Future vs. the Past

            Octavia Butler, in Kindred, further explores the similarities and the differences between the African American women in the past and the present. This representation is demonstrated by using two characters: Dana who comes from the present and Alice who is from the past. These women are similar not only in appearance, but in the fact that they are blood related, and by using them as parallels of one another in different times, the readers are able to analyze and compare African American women in the past versus the present. Even the attitude that other characters have towards these two women are quite similar. For example, both women are hated by Liza, another slave, but are loved and desired by Rufus. Also, they were both originally born as free women but end up being slaves as a results of their circumstances.

 

The reader becomes aware that Dana does not belong to either of the categories, a slave or a free-women, because her identity as a black women is not the same as Alice’s


            The similarity of Dana and Alice to one another is emphasized when Alice claims, “Anyway, all that means we’re two halves of the same woman—at least in his crazy head” (228)¹. They are the same in Rufus’s eyes as he thinks that all African women are the same. However, that is not true, since there is a huge generational difference between the two women, which makes them think differently. The reason behind this is that Dana grew up in a modern, more open minded society than Alice, which allows Dana to complete her education and become more knowledgeable than Alice, who grew up during an era when African Americans, whether male or female, did not have the right to an education. Also, it is true that they are both considered as slaves in that time, but they are not actually the same. The reader becomes aware that Dana does not belong to either of the categories, a slave or a free-women, because her identity as a black women is not the same as Alice’s. Dana is more like an observer who cannot change anything significantly for fear that she might alter her own future. Therefore, the way that she observes what is occurring would be the same way the readers would receive these acts of violence and racism towards gender and race.


Reference
  1. Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press, 2003

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