Content warning: Spoilers, mentions of slavery, rape, sexual assault, misogyny, and internalized misogyny.
I am well aware that there likely isn't any "right" way I can review, nay criticize, such a beloved and acclaimed classic about race and slavery, without bringing up a lot of uncomfortable topics, in trying to explain what bothered me about it specifically.
As a white woman, I know I really have no right to criticize a book containing this subject matter, as well as a stream of interconnected matters, that is written by a woman of colour. Also as a sensitive person, I am always afraid of offending anyone. But I guess that can't be helped sometimes, when voicing an opinion, which I can't keep locked up any longer.
Oh mercy, will this opinion be controversial. But I wish to let people know some things about 'Kindred', whether they have read it or are thinking about reading it.
Most of the problems I have with 'Kindred' - about an African American woman in the 1970s, Dana, who keeps being mysteriously transported to the 1800s Maryland plantation to save her white ancestor from getting killed in his various antics - are summed up in this Goodreads review here. You can read that in order to get a good idea of why I might in fact despise this book that should have been important and relevant today.
But for my own review, I'm just going to throw up my hands and get down to the point; why I hate 'Kindred':
It expects the reader to sympathise with a rapist.
It expects the reader to sympathise with a serial rapist, who remains completely unrepentant throughout the book. He never changes, never grows, never thinks of anyone's feelings but his own.
It has the black female protagonist sympathise with and keep making excuses for said white male rapist, who doubly is a slave owner. Again and again, she excuses his actions. She gives in to his tantrums and orders. And she is supposed to be a highly-educated modern woman with forward-thinking views, trapped in a time of slavery, where she has no rights whatsoever, and is in constant danger of being whipped, raped and killed.
I hate Dana, pure and simple. I hate her white rapist ancestor, Rufus, more, but Dana's condoning and excusing him and insinuating that he is just misunderstood and lonely and oh-so-in-love-he-can't-help-himself-blah-blah-blah, makes her just as bad as he is. I will say that at first I was fully engrossed and engaged with 'Kindred' and its writing style, and Dana had strong convictions and was fully aware of how horrible the situation she was in truly was. She was petrified and confused, and she felt for other slaves and their plight.
But then:
The longer Dana stays in the past, the more passive and accepting of her slave role she becomes. She has no inner strength, nor is she merely playing the part in order to survive in an impossible time, she is just a selfish, self-abnegating Uncle Tom and doormat. I can't count how many times she says, in her first person narration, "I obeyed", in relation to white men telling her what to do, even her white husband in the present time, offering no resistance or hesitation whatsoever. No thought is made of her using the word "obeyed" and other submissive slave terms internally. And she's meant to be a modern black woman! Why would she be like this? Why is she growing weaker and more submissive from her experiences instead of more committed to her own rights and causes, and those of other black people who have suffered throughout the ages?
Dana grows much more heartless towards black people as well. She ends up holding no sympathy for or understanding of her fellow slaves. None. Instead of making friends and confidantes - making any real kind of positive connection - she judges them and makes false assumptions. She seems to think that some slaves are content with their lot in life (like with the mammy cook, Sarah). No, Dana, they wouldn't be. Not for themselves or for their children who are sold off to auctions in other areas as soon as they're old enough to hold a full bucket of water. And that's if they're lucky, or else they're sold as babies. Dana thinks and does nothing about this.
Well, actually, she does have plenty of thoughts. But I think that this paragraph and a half - coming right after she tells Sarah that escaped black slaves do learn to read and will write about their struggles for freedom in books, and Sarah refuses to believe it - sums it all up:
'She had done the safe thing - had accepted a life of slavery because she was afraid. She was the kind of woman who might have been called 'mammy' in some other household. She was the kind of woman who would be held in contempt during the militant nineteen sixties. The house-n[****]r, the handkerchief-head, the female Uncle Tom - the frightened powerless woman who had already lost all she could stand to lose, and who knew as little about the freedom of the North as she knew about the hereafter.
I looked down on her myself for a while. Moral superiority. Here was someone even less courageous than I was. That comforted me somehow.' - page 159
What a contradictory whiplash!
Dana, you hypocritical, sociopathic arsehole. You have no shame. No integrity. No dignity.
Alice is as justified in hating you as she is in hating Rufus, her rapist. (Oh yes, I'll talk about Alice in a bit.)
Is Dana emulating the slaves' calm demeanour put on in order to survive for their families? Her inner monologue reflects nothing like this, or there isn't enough of it. If she is judging the slaves for their passivity, well, that would be awfully hypocritical of her. Not much empathy for the cowed, fearful, beaten slaves, either, even when she gets whipped and beaten every day she is stuck in the past, which Rufus barely interferes with. In fact the lazy, spoiled, selfish, racist, misogynistic bastard does virtually nothing to help her and others. Because he knows he benefits from slavery. He truly is the patriarchy personified. Not that Dana ever realises this.
Anyway, Dana's self-preservation skills are no better than most of the other slaves who actually had to grow up in the 19th century American South, yet she still judges them. As much as she admonishes Rufus, at the same time she tries to understand and empathise with him, a white rapist slave owner. But the slaves themselves? Our heroine doesn't give them nearly enough positive attention.
She's worse when it comes to considering the female slaves - who are typically girl-hating, girl-backstabbing, and fighting amongst themselves. Black sisterhood, what's that, Audre Lorde?
Whichever way you interpret it, Dana is terrible.
The closest she actually comes to making a lasting difference in the slaves' lives is secretly teaching some of them to read, but that's a small detail and it doesn't go anywhere in-story.
Doesn't this sound twisted to anyone else?
Then there's how our lovely Dana treats Alice.
Poor Alice.
Alice is Rufus's childhood friend. And because Dana's life revolves solely around Rufus and keeping him safe and happy - understandable seeing as her existence depends on him reproducing, but this point is hardly addressed, disturbingly - she only sympathises with him as he repeatedly rapes Alice. Dana goes so far as to claim that Rufus is only doing this because he loves Alice (he, a manipulative and gaslighting crybaby, tells her as such, and she stupidly believes him), and that Alice is a stubborn, coldhearted, ungrateful bitch for refusing his advances. She slut-shames and victim-blames her.
Dana, a black woman, actually talks Alice, another black woman, into giving in to Rufus, a white slave owner. She basically tells her, "Be happy already, he loves you. What other choice do you have? He won't be so violent if you come quietly, and you could grow to love him, too,"
Alice.
A slave.
A rape victim.
A domestic violence victim.
A mother.
In a time and place where she has no rights to speak of.
Who in fact shows more agency, assertion, survival skills, anger at the injustices surrounding her, and general fight in her than our 1970s black woman protagonist.
She is punished and eventually killed off for being a termed "angry black woman".
Alice: who is also Dana's ancestor, but it is Rufus, the white male rapist slave owner (I cannot stress that point across enough), whom Dana feels kindred to. Whom she feels protective over.
Sisterhood never meant shit.
It is all about Rufus and making him happy. It isn't just about his survival so that Dana would one day exist. It is Rufus who controls Dana's life, even making her come to his time whenever he is in danger (it doesn't bother me that the time travel aspect of the book isn't explained, since I like a bit of ambiguity in my classic lit, and it isn't that important compared to everything else). Dana relies on him for her own survival; she keeps waiting to be rescued by him, keeps being surprised whenever he, a deceptive rapist slave owner, disappoints her, and she does whatever he tells her to do, like a good slave, even when she does call him out on his bullshit and keep talking to him.
She believes Rufus "loves" Alice, but as an educated woman she should know that rape and love have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Rape is a form of power over others, and that's that. Dana never comes to this conclusion. Alice, the victim, is only acting up like a difficult child ( as if Rufus isn't! and times a million! ), and may love him after all ( why?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ). No one and nothing to blame but Rufus's upbringing.
Dana only effectively stands up to Rufus, only realises that hey, maybe he isn't such a nice guy, when, at the very end, he attacks and tries to rape her. Alice, his other black female victims, pfff, fuck them, literally: it isn't until Dana herself is being attacked by the oh-so poor rapist slave owner - who seriously has no redeeming qualities - it isn't until her world is shattered by the shock that he could do such a thing to her - that she finally does something about him.
There are not enough "fuck off"s in the entire universe for me to express my rage and disgust at all this.
Dana is a heinous, baffling, inconsistent, selfish, stupid, heartless cow, whose life revolves around the needs and wants of her white male relatives, and has fucked up priorities for a woman of her position.
What exactly has she learned from her journey and experiences, anyway? Not a lot, from what I've read. She starts out progressive, smart and headstrong, but her experiences with legalised slavery and forced submissiveness seem to have left her regressive and worse off than before. She doesn't really do anything once she is returned to her own future time for good. Isn't this retroactively backwards for a book about such sensitive, vital and relevant issues?
Rufus is a spoiled, entitled, whiny, self-absorbed, cunning, manipulative, violent, hateful, disgusting, misogynistic, racist manchild and fuckstain on the underwear of society - and he receives more attention, more sympathy, more of a "character arc", than Alice and the other slaves put together.
Why should we care about this monster? Why does Dana, against her better judgement?
I shall safely leave the review at that. I don't know what else to write, without adding further food for the fire. I'm sure there is a reason why the issues of rape, victim-blaming, internalized misogyny and internalized misogynoir seem to keep being glossed over and ignored whenever 'Kindred' is praised as a masterpiece by millions of people. It is very well-written and addictive, and effectively horrifying... just not always in the right places.
I won't dare to speculate what the author thought, or hadn't thought, when she wrote it. I suppose, as a 1979 publication, 'Kindred' is still a product of its time. Though the author ought to have known better; that the prejudices of racism and misogyny are linked. Black women helped to bring light to what is termed "intersectional feminism". What about "discrimination doesn't discriminate"?
I recommend reading Audre Lorde's works instead of this. They are far more positive, enlightening, and female-friendly. They in no way excuse the patriarchy and let it go unchallenged, for one.
Final Score: 0/5
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