50 Fun Facts About Kindred

In the prologue of Octavia Butler's Kindred, which part of her body has Dana lost on her final trip home?

Her left arm is crushed into the wall of her house at the spot where Rufus was gripping it. Butler said she could not let Dana come back whole, because slavery did not leave people whole.

In Kindred, Dana is pulled back in time to the Weylin plantation on the Eastern Shore of which state?

Maryland is where Butler went for field research, wandering Talbot County on the Eastern Shore before writing. Dana learns where she is on her second trip, which lands her there around 1815.

On her first trip to the past in Kindred, Dana saves the young, red-haired Rufus from which danger?

Drowning nearly kills Rufus as a small boy, and Dana wades into the river and revives him on the bank. His mother repays her by screaming and hitting her, sure the stranger is killing him.

What must Dana feel before the dizziness in Kindred will carry her from the plantation back to 1976?

Terror of dying is the only thing that sends Dana home, just as mortal danger to Rufus is what summons her. As she grows used to plantation violence, even a whipping stops being enough.

When Kevin travels to the past with Dana in Kindred, what does he pretend to be to keep her safe?

Her owner is the part Dana herself tells Kevin to play, moments after Rufus reacts with violent disbelief to hearing they are married. The act works well enough that Tom Weylin invites Kevin to dinner.

On which national holiday in 1976 does Dana make her last journey to the Weylin plantation in Kindred?

Independence Day of the Bicentennial year is when Dana is pulled back for the last time. Scholars see the date as Butler tying one woman's ordeal to the nation's unfinished history.

Which NASA mission's 2021 Mars touchdown site was named in honor of Kindred author Octavia Butler?

Perseverance set down at a spot NASA christened Octavia E. Butler Landing. She already had an asteroid and a mountain on Pluto's moon Charon carrying her name.

Octavia Butler first planned for the time-traveling hero of Kindred to be what, before deciding it would not work?

A man, Butler concluded, would be seen as dangerous and killed before he could learn the rules of submission. A woman, she reasoned, might be just as dangerous but would not be perceived that way.

Which occupation do Dana and her husband Kevin share in Kindred, despite both of their families disapproving of it?

Writer is what both of them are, and Dana supports her fiction with minimum-wage temp jobs. Butler did the same, living on such work until 1978.

In the final chapter of Kindred, what does Dana use to kill Rufus when he attacks her in the attic?

A knife she had brought from 1976 is what Dana grabs, and she stabs Rufus twice. He dies still gripping her, and the journey home that follows costs her dearly.

Which personal occasion is Dana marking in Kindred on the June day she is first pulled into the past?

Her birthday, her twenty-sixth, is the day the dizziness first takes Dana. Critic Angelyn Mitchell reads the timing as pointed: the journey from liberty into bondage begins on the day she was born.

What are Dana and Kevin doing in their new house in Kindred when she first grows dizzy and vanishes?

Unpacking books is the chore Dana is in the middle of when the room blurs. To Kevin she is gone only a few seconds before reappearing on the other side of the room.

In Kindred, Dana and Kevin have just left an apartment in which city when she is first pulled into the past?

Los Angeles is where the apartment was; the couple's new house stands a few miles away in a suburb. The 2022 television version keeps the city but shifts the present day to 2016.

On Dana's second trip in Kindred, what has young Rufus set alight in a bedroom to get back at his father?

The drapes go up because Tom Weylin beat Rufus for stealing a dollar, and the boy wanted revenge. Dana smothers the flames, then learns from him that she has landed in about 1815.

In Kindred's chapter The Fire, what name is given to the white riders who whip Alice's father for lacking a pass?

Patrollers were gangs of young white men charged with maintaining order among the enslaved. Dana watches them drag the man from his family's cabin, and one comes back and attacks her.

In The Fall, the Kindred chapter where Kevin first travels with Dana, what injury has Rufus suffered?

A broken leg has Rufus writhing on the ground when the couple arrive. His father's first reaction on reaching the boy is to wonder gruffly how much it will cost.

In Kindred, what do Dana and Kevin show the injured Rufus to prove that they have come from the future?

Dated coins from Kevin's pockets are the proof, their years far in Rufus's future. The boy promises to keep the pair's secret.

Which job does Tom Weylin offer Kevin in Kindred, letting the couple stay on the plantation for weeks?

Tutor to Rufus is the post, which gives the couple food and shelter while the boy recovers. It also keeps Dana close to the child her own family line depends on.

Tom Weylin whips Dana at the end of The Fall in Kindred after catching her doing what?

Teaching a boy to read with a stolen book is what Tom Weylin walks in on, and he drags Dana outside and whips her. The beating sends her home before Kevin can reach her, stranding him for five years.

Which classic adventure novel is the first that Dana reads aloud to the bedridden Rufus in Kindred?

Robinson Crusoe comes from a library that had belonged to Tom Weylin's first wife. Rufus, whose schoolteacher had called him stupid, would rather listen than struggle through a page himself.

After Alice and her husband Isaac are caught in Kindred, traders carry the mutilated Isaac off toward which state?

Mississippi is where the traders are headed with Isaac, whose ears were cut off as punishment. Alice, born free, is beaten, set upon by dogs and enslaved for helping him run.

In a flashback in Kindred, where do Dana and Kevin marry with no family present after relatives on both sides object?

Las Vegas is where they go to marry after Kevin's sister and Dana's uncle both object. Only her aunt favors the match, on the grounds that any children would have lighter skin.

In Kindred's chapter The Fight, which promise does Dana discover Rufus has not kept just before she runs away?

Mailing her letters to Kevin is what Rufus swore to do, but Alice finds out he never sent them and tells Dana. Her escape ends when Rufus and his father ride her down and Tom Weylin whips her.

Which enslaved woman in Kindred betrays Dana's escape attempt and is beaten by the other women as a warning?

Liza resents Dana for nursing Alice back to health, because Alice then took over her job and Liza was sent to the fields. The other women treat the betrayal as one against the whole community.

Which virtue does Rufus claim for his father Tom Weylin in Kindred, even though Tom whips and sells people?

Keeping his word is the one virtue Rufus claims for his father, who honors a promise whatever the color of the person he made it to. Tom also lets Dana choose whether to stay or go looking for Kevin.

What did Kevin grow as a disguise during his five years stranded in the past in Kindred, after helping people escape?

A beard hid Kevin from a lynch mob after he helped enslaved people get away. Dana is shocked to find that the gray-bearded rider who comes for her is her husband, his face now lined and scarred.

In The Storm chapter of Kindred, which modern medicine does Dana give the feverish Rufus, suspecting malaria?

Aspirin from her packed bag is all Dana has to bring the fever down. Rufus survives but stays weak for weeks.

What kills Tom Weylin in Kindred, a death his son blames on Dana because she could not save him?

A heart attack fells Tom Weylin, leaving Rufus master of the plantation and of his father's debts. He soon begins selling people to pay them.

How does Rufus punish Dana in Kindred after his father's death, before relenting when she collapses?

Labor in the cornfields is the sentence, and by the time Rufus changes his mind Dana has collapsed and the overseer is whipping her. He then assigns her to care for his ailing mother.

In Kindred, which standard medical treatment of the era kills two of the young children Alice bears Rufus?

Bloodletting was the doctor's customary answer to illness, and Rufus forced Alice to allow it. Of their first three children, only a boy named Joe survived.

After Alice tries to run in Kindred, Rufus claims to have sold their children but has really sent them to which city?

Baltimore, with his aunt, is where the children really were. Believing them gone for good, Alice took her own life, and a guilt-stricken Rufus nearly did the same.

In Kindred's epilogue, which man does Dana suspect of burning the Weylin house to hide how Rufus really died?

Nigel walks in on Rufus's last moments, and old newspapers later blame the death on a house fire. He, his wife and Rufus's two children are the only names missing from the sale notice that followed.

In Kindred, which child of Rufus and Alice heads the family records in Dana's Bible as her direct ancestor?

Hagar is the reason Dana keeps saving Rufus: until the girl is conceived, his death would erase her own family line. Dana had known her only as a bare name inked in the family Bible.

Dana, the narrator of Octavia Butler's Kindred, uses a shortened form of which full first name?

Edana is the name on record, but she goes by the shortened form she prefers. Butler held back her narrator's race until the second chapter, saying an earlier reveal would have had less impact.

Which job does Sarah hold in the Weylin household in Kindred, a post that lets her shield the other house slaves?

Cook and domestic manager, Sarah drives the house staff hard while trying to protect them. All but one of her own children were sold away, and the threat of losing the last keeps her from running.

In Kindred, which daughter of Sarah cannot speak yet reassures Dana through gestures when others call her too white?

Carrie escaped being sold only because a girl who cannot talk was thought to be worth nothing. She makes Dana see that the people of the plantation are safer with Rufus alive than dead.

Which chapter of Kindred, the last before the epilogue, covers Dana's final trip and the death of Rufus?

The Rope closes a run of stark chapter titles: The River, The Fire, The Fall, The Fight and The Storm. Scholars say the headings make events feel elemental, larger than the characters' own lives.

Which drug has Rufus's mother Margaret Weylin come to depend on by the time she returns to the plantation in Kindred?

Laudanum, an opium preparation, has made Margaret calmer than the woman who once hit Dana. She had left the plantation after losing twin babies, and in time she and Dana become friends.

In Kindred, at what kind of workplace does Dana meet Kevin while a temp agency has her doing inventory?

An auto-parts warehouse is where Kevin has a job when he notices the worn-out temp. After four months together he proposes, to the dismay of both their families.

In Octavia Butler's Kindred, the Weylin plantation lies just outside which real town on the Eastern Shore?

Easton anchors the story in a real place. Critic Sandra Y. Govan judged that there is probably no more vivid depiction of life on an Eastern Shore plantation.

In 1995 Kindred author Octavia Butler became the first science fiction author to win which award, worth $295,000?

A MacArthur Fellowship put Butler in company no science fiction author had reached before. Years earlier her mother had paid more than a month's rent just to have an agent look at her stories.

In which California city was Kindred author Octavia Butler born and raised by her widowed mother, a housemaid?

Pasadena shaped Butler: a painfully shy child, she spent her free time in its Central Library. At the city's community college she later got the first idea for her time-travel story.

Which Octavia Butler novel written after Kindred follows teenager Lauren Olamina through a collapsing California?

Parable of the Sower gives its heroine a syndrome that makes her feel any physical pain she witnesses. She answers the chaos around her by founding a new belief system, Earthseed.

Which noted science fiction author mentored Octavia Butler before Kindred and paid $100 toward her Clarion workshop fee?

Harlan Ellison gave Butler her first honest criticism after years of baffling rejections, and bought one of her earliest stories. He later praised Kindred as a novel to return to again and again.

For Kindred, Octavia Butler toured which presidential plantation home, where guides called the enslaved servants?

Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate, was shown by guides who avoided calling it a former slave plantation. Butler said her own aim with the novel was to make people feel history.

Although most of her work is classed as science fiction, which genre label did Octavia Butler herself give Kindred?

Fantasy, and a grim kind of it, was Butler's own term for a story that never explains how Dana travels. Scholars more often file the novel with slave narratives retold by modern authors.

A classmate from which 1960s movement pushed Octavia Butler toward Kindred by scorning his elders as subservient?

Black Power was the classmate's cause, and he said he wanted to kill the older people he saw as traitors. Butler wrote the novel to show their endurance as silent, courageous survival.

On which streaming service did all eight episodes of the Kindred television series premiere in December 2022?

Hulu streamed the FX series, which gave Dana a time-traveling mother the novel never had. It was canceled after one season, having covered only the opening three chapters.

In 2017 Damian Duffy and John Jennings adapted Kindred into which format, a number-one New York Times bestseller?

A graphic novel version topped the hardcover graphic-book list on its debut. Jennings drew the 1970s in muted colors and the plantation past in vibrant ones, to show how present slavery's remnants remain.

In Kindred, what are enslaved children acting out as a game when Dana and Kevin quarrel over how much he notices?

An auction is the game, played by children too young to grasp what a sale will one day mean for them. Dana is shaken, Kevin tells her she is making too much of it, and the pair argue.