Three Coasts

Responding to Corrina's tribute -- I was saddened by losing Octavia Butler when she was only 58 -- sad for the novels she had yet to write. Kindred is a deeply compelling psychological treatment of slavery. I remember being skeptical of the book because after reading slave narratives and countless post-colonial treatments of slavery, I thought, what more could be said? And then came Butler's brilliant sci-fi story of a woman of today getting sucked back into the antebellum American South. We get sucked there along with her and experience the rebellion of spirit and awful, seductive coping mechanisms with her.