"I'm a long way from home": Seeking Belonging in the Afterlives of Slavery in Octavia Butler's Kindred

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2019
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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In her 1978 neo-slave narrative Kindred, Octavia Butler utilizes the science-fiction trope of time travel to allow Dana, a Black woman from the 20th century, to travel to the antebellum South where she both witnesses and experiences trauma inflicted on slaves. While many scholars have recognized and lauded Kindred for its mediation on race and history through science fiction, they have not extensively considered how the text allegorically comments on the realities of African-Americans in a contemporary context. Throughout my project, I apply theoretical frameworks by scholars such as Christina Sharpe, Avery Gordon, bell hooks, and Rahul K. Gairola whose work investigate the consequences of slavery on African-Americans’ ability to forge a sense of safety and home in America. As intergenerational trauma theory has emphasized, slavery raises questions about the experiences of African-Americans whose unjust realities may be connected to the historical violence their ancestors endured. Despite the fact that critics of the novel have examined Dana’s experiences in the past considerably, it is just as crucial to analyze the long-term implications of Dana’s time travel in the present and future beyond the limits of the text itself. Exploring Dana’s struggle with belonging can suggest the implications of slavery in a modern society where African-Americans must grapple with surrounding forms of institutionalized racism such as mass incarceration and police brutality.
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