Neo-Slave Narrative in Octavia Butler’s Kindred through the Perspectives of Gender and Race

Abstract

The thesis examines African American women’s suffering through the perspectives of race and gender in Octavia Butler’s neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979).The aim of the study is twofold. First, it discusses racial and gender oppression black women suffer from in the system of slavery in white mainstream society, particularly in the south antebellum. Second, it examines black female power and resistance among African American women in the neo-slave narrative. The approach that is used to conduct this modest study is Black Feminism, since it focuses on black women’s marginalization and oppression and raises their self-awareness and self-empowerment in a racist patriarchal society. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is a theoretical framework for the whole dissertation, whereas the second and the third chapters are analytical. Thus, the thesis analyzed the perspectives of racial and gender oppression through the experiences of Butler’s protagonist Dana, a young black woman who lived in ultimate freedom in California with her white husband Kevin Franklin and mysteriously plunged to the past slavery in South antebellum. Accordingly, the thesis attempts to shed light on the violent acts black women witnessed during slavery, racial power relations that existed between the oppressor and the oppressed and the facades of resistance that these women pass through to survive despite the harsh conditions in the plantation.