Quirky Soul Magazine Quirky Soul Magazine Issue 07 | Page 77

First, a writer whose name I have seen on my timeline for the past year or two. She goes by the name Octavia E Butler, an African American science fiction author. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, in 1995 she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. There are two books of hers that I’ve chosen. The first ‘Kindred’ tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and mysteriously transported from her home in 1970s California to the antebellum South. Dana moves between worlds: one in which she is a free woman and another where she is part of a complicated familial history on a southern plantation where she is forced to interact with and save the life of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of her ancestors. Frightening, compelling and richly detailed, ‘Kindred’ takes an imagined yet unstinting look at our complicated social history. Adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings.