A Black woman moves into her new home with her husband on her birthday. While unpacking, she gets nauseous, and finds herself transported back to Maryland in the early 1800s where a child is drowning. Her great-great-great grandfather points a gun at her. Her terror sends her back to her shocked husband.
This novel is fantasy, and it explores dark themes. And sadly, it is just as relevant today as it was when it was published in the 1970s. In fact, when I heard about this book on Twitter, I believe, it was listed as a book that white people should read to understand or at least gain an appreciation of slavery and how Black people were treated. Because of the BLM movement and all the work that has been done (and that I have been doing to educate myself), I just assumed it was a more recent book. I was somewhat disappointed that it was almost 40 years old. We seem to have learned nothing as a culture since then.
This book gives, from my understanding, a realistic (not Hollywood-ized) portrayal of slavery, including beatings, killings, selling people as goods. It was not an easy read. And one of the themes explored in the book is how easy it was for a modern couple to find themselves accepting of the time… for their own survival. It forces you to come to grips with the fact that the slaves often had no choices when it came to how they behaved, and “sucking up” to the White man may help their personal situation but deprive them of community and resources to survive. And the characters in this story desperately want to survive. They are individual human beings, with their own strengths and flaws, and Butler does this to humanize slavery and the terror of it for a modern audience so that we can better understand it.
The main character’s husband is White, a fact that is not revealed until about 1/4 of the way through the book (I went back and double checked). I found this interesting, because of course I assumed he was also Black. I’ve written about this before in Scalzi’s books where he often deliberately plays with our reader expectations (usually with gender). Later in the book, he is also transported back in time, and he has to live there for a long time. Of course, as a white man (and an interracial couple, which of course they can’t be in 1820) he has an exceptionally different experience. One of the more touching scenes in the book is when he is relating how difficult he finds things to be, and the main character puts him in his place.
The version I read included a critical essay and discussion questions at the back. I strongly encourage anyone who is trying to educate themselves about the Black experience in America to read this book. It is graphic, and I think it is important to be exposed to this horror. Yes, we have come a long way since the 1820s, but have we come far enough? Riot Baby, which I read several months ago now, would suggest that we have not. And recent events of the last 2 years confirm this.
I am rating this 3 stars not because it is not important, because this book is terribly important. But this blog is about science fiction that I like, and I can’t claim to like this book, or that it is even science fiction. But I am very glad I read it, and I will be thinking about it for a while.