Kindred

'Octavia Butler sa writer who will be with us for a long, lo time, and Kindred is that rare magical artif. ... the no,·el one returns to, again and again.' - HA R LA E LLI SO

KINDRED

KINDRED

Octavia E. Butler

BEACON PRESS BOSTON

Beacon Press

25 Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02108 www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books

are published under the auspices of

the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 1979 by Octavia E. Butler

Reader’s Guide © 2003 by Beacon Press

First published as a hardcover by Doubleday in 1979

First published as a Beacon paperback in 1988

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

13 12 11 10 09 14 13 12 11 10

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper

ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butler, Octavia E.

Kindred / Octavia E. Butler ; with an afterword by Robert Crossley. p. cm. — (Black women writers series)

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8070-8369-7 (alk. paper)

1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)— Fiction. 3. Southern States—Fiction. 4. Slaveholders—Fiction. 5. Time travel—Fiction. 6. Slavery—Fiction. 7. Slaves—Fiction. I. Title.

II. Series.

PS3552.U827K5 2004

813'.54—dc22

2003062862

To Victoria Rose, friend and goad

Contents

PROLOGUE 9

THE RIVER 12

THE FIRE 18

THE FALL 52

THE FIGHT 108

THE STORM 189

THE ROPE 240

EPILOGUE 262

READER’S GUIDE 265

Critical Essay 265

Discussion Questions 285

Prologue

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and secu- rity I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too.

But before he could come to me, I had to convince the police that he did not belong in jail. That took time. The police were shadows who appeared intermittently at my bedside to ask me questions I had to strug- gle to understand.

“How did you hurt your arm?” they asked. “Who hurt you?” My atten- tion was captured by the word they used: Hurt. As though I’d scratched my arm. Didn’t they think I knew it was gone?

“Accident,” I heard myself whisper. “It was an accident.”

They began asking me about Kevin. Their words seemed to blur together at first, and I paid little attention. After a while, though, I replayed them and suddenly realized that these men were trying to blame Kevin for “hurting” my arm.

“No.” I shook my head weakly against the pillow. “Not Kevin. Is he here? Can I see him?”

“Who then?” they persisted.

I tried to think through the drugs, through the distant pain, but there was no honest explanation I could give them—none they would believe. “An accident,” I repeated. “My fault, not Kevin’s. Please let me see

him.”