{"id":1941,"date":"2018-05-03T13:52:34","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T17:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2018-05-03T13:52:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T17:52:34","slug":"kindred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/kindred\/","title":{"rendered":"Kindred"},"content":{"rendered":"

Octavia Butler once described her supernatural, time-traveling neo-slave narrative\u00a0Kindred<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as \u201ca grim fantasy\u201d. It\u2019s hard to imagine any realistic treatment of slave life in the antebellum South as being anything but tremendously grim. The novel is most often seen as a historical fantasy, or a type of slipstream science fiction, and not as a horror novel.<\/p>\n

But horror and the evocation of dread are important elements of the narrative, and I was struck by how Butler layered horror in her descriptions. For instance, here\u2019s the first time the narrator witnesses a man being whipped:<\/p>\n

I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip. I could see his body jerking, convulsing, straining against the rope as his screaming went on and on. My stomach heaved, and I had to force myself to stay where I was and keep quiet. Why didn\u2019t they stop!<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, Master,\u201d the man begged. \u201cFor Godsake, Master, please\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I shut my eyes and tensed my muscles against an urge to vomit.<\/p>\n

I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies. I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams. But I hadn\u2019t lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me. In fact, she and I were reacting very much alike. My face too was wet with tears. And my mind was darting from one thought to another, trying to tune out the whipping. (Butler 33)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In these paragraphs, Butler employs sensory horror throughout this violent scene in the form of the smell of the man\u2019s sweat, the sound of the whip and his cries, and in the narrator\u2019s nausea. But beyond the physical\/sensory, there\u2019s the emotional horror of the scene: the slave\u2019s shaming, the narrator\u2019s own sense of powerlessness and fear and self-loathing at what she perceives as her own cowardice.<\/p>\n

Being forced to helplessly witness cruelty of that magnitude is in itself a form of violence, and the narrator (and consequently the reader) are forced to face the terrible life that the narrator\u2019s ancestors must endure. Further, the narrator realizes that she\u2019s less prepared to deal with this world than a small child \u2026 which is all by itself a horrifying and humbling thought for any grown adult.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all a visceral, vivid, microcosmic portrayal of the terrible damage that slavery did even to people who were free-born. The study of how Butler portrays violence and terror in the book is a useful one for any writer who seeks to write horror, but it\u2019s especially useful for those who are writing historical narratives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Books For Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n

Butler, Octavia E.\u00a0Kindred<\/em>. Boston: Beacon, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n

Yaszek, Lisa. \u201c\u2018A Grim Fantasy\u2019\u201d: Remaking American History in Octavia Butler\u2019s\u00a0Kindred<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0Signs<\/em>\u00a028.4 (2003): 1053\u20131066. Web.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Octavia Butler once described her supernatural, time-traveling neo-slave narrative\u00a0Kindred\u00a0as \u201ca grim fantasy\u201d. It\u2019s hard to imagine any realistic treatment of slave life in the antebellum […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[130,129,9,128],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-fantasy","tag-historical","tag-horror","tag-octavia-butler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Kindredbig-1012x675-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s8qT6f-kindred","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":554,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/on-dark-fantasy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":0},"title":"On Dark Fantasy","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"February 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 1990s, dark fantasy became regarded as being \"code\" for horror. Why? Major publishers who flooded the market with awful, horrible, no-good novels in the 1980s to cash in on horror's popularity decided it was the genre's fault when readers were unwilling to buy mass-produced dreck. But, the market\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "dark fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"dark fantasy","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/dark-fantasy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":161,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/on-urban-fantasy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":1},"title":"On Urban Fantasy","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"February 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"On several occasions, I\u2019ve heard readers bemoaning the comparatively small number of horror novels being released by major publishers. But the horror is out there; it just sometimes isn\u2019t being marketed as such. In the case of supernatural horror in particular, it\u2019s often being marketed as urban fantasy. Take Tim\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Writing Advice"","block_context":{"text":"Writing Advice","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/writing-advice\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/liens_infernaux_1920x1200.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":546,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/fantasy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":2},"title":"Fantasy","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"March 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The literary genre of fantasy, along with science fiction and horror, can itself be put under the larger genre umbrella of speculative fiction. Thus, the definitions in this article should be considered roughly descriptive rather than prescriptive. There's a lot of genre crossover in some of my favorite speculative fiction\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "genre"","block_context":{"text":"genre","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/genre\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1531,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/the-red-tree\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":3},"title":"The Red Tree","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"August 1, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Caitli\u0301n R. Kiernan\u2019s\u00a0The Red Tree\u00a0is a dizzying weird gothic novel that chronicles the final months of a writer named Sarah Crowe as she grieves for her dead girlfriend, wrestles with writer's block and tries to unravel the dark mysteries behind the legends surrounding an ancient oak tree growing near the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "dark fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"dark fantasy","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/dark-fantasy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/redtree.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":582,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/j-n-williamson-biography-and-appreciation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":4},"title":"J.N. Williamson Biography and Appreciation","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"December 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Author\/editor J.N. \"Jerry\" Williamson died this past Thursday. He was a friend of mine, a kind man and an excellent writer whose work has largely fallen out of print. If you find the following books, I encourage you to look past the garish 80s horror covers and titles that he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "biography"","block_context":{"text":"biography","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/biography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=lookwhatifoun-20&l=ur2&o=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7763,"url":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/sister-maiden-monster-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":1941,"position":5},"title":"Sister, Maiden, Monster News","author":"Lucy A. Snyder","date":"September 8, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Sister, Maiden, Monster Available at NetGalley NetGalley readers can request an advance digital copy of Sister, Maiden, Monster for review. E-copies will be available until the novel is published on February 21, 2023. https:\/\/www.netgalley.com\/catalog\/book\/266015 Advance Reviews \u201cLucy A. Snyder has always been a trailblazer, and with Sister, Maiden, Monster, she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "horror"","block_context":{"text":"horror","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/category\/horror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sister Maiden Monster Cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Sister-Maiden-Monster-Cover-Reveal_Twitter_Nightfire.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Sister-Maiden-Monster-Cover-Reveal_Twitter_Nightfire.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Sister-Maiden-Monster-Cover-Reveal_Twitter_Nightfire.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lucysnyder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Sister-Maiden-Monster-Cover-Reveal_Twitter_Nightfire.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1946,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions\/1946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}