So what was the point of all that?
I finished Kindred with a strange taste in my mouth. While this was one of the more legible books we've read thus far (thank you, Octavia Butler), I had a hard time figuring out the "moral of the story" - the endings of Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo just felt fitting for me, and each helped complete or at least supplement the threads woven throughout each novel. These themes also supplement each other well - the Mu'tafikah complement the main topic of Jes Grew by exposing the fundamentals of western culture, for example. Since finishing Kindred, I have spent some time thinking (and procrastinating) about the major takeaways the novel presents, and how they connect with one another. 1. Slavery was bad… …but not in the way you think. A lot of Butler’s portrayal of slavery is underwhelming (“This place isn’t as bad as I thought it would be”), which makes its worst moments pack an even heavier punch. What stuck out to me most were the familial aspects of slavery, like how ent...