The book is the first-person account of a young African-American woman writer, Dana
who finds herself shuttled between her California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. There she meets her ancestors: a spoiled, self-destructive white slave owner and the proud black freewoman he has forced into slavery and concubinage. As her stays in the past become longer, Dana becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community, making hard compromises to survive slavery and to ensure her existence in her own time.The group found strong connections to Science fiction and magical realism as a vehicle for minority rights - women's rights in particular. We tossed round Atwood, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and many others. We also discussed the racial tensions between the Antebellum South, the mid-1970s (the book being published around the time Roots was on TV, thus giving white folks a realistic POV of being a slave in the Civil War era), and the political climate of today (Black Lives Matter. #MeToo, etc.).
Although some of us thought the book was at times "clunky" and "elementary" in it's writing style, I was under the impression that everyone enjoyed the book on some level, and we all had wonderful, civil discussions regarding our own racism here in NH. We still wished more from the book, as some of us thought Ms. Butler glossed over certain details that felt important to the story. Others wished she wrote a book about Kevin's point of view, as he was stuck in time for 5 years without Dana. We also touched upon some parallel characterization between Kevin and Rufus, the main fact that Dana was taking care of both white men because she loved them on different levels.
The biggest topic of the night was how much metaphor was scattered throughout the book, particularly Dana losing her arm in the wall of the house at the end of the book. Some believed that her arm represented black people and the house representing the US, and how African Americans have given a lot of themselves to build this nation and sacrificed their entire selves but had never been given proper credit. Others believed that it was a penance for killing Rufus at the end of the novel, or that she literally had to drag herself away from her terrible past. I loved everyone's differing opinions on the arm metaphors, and I believe that's what makes this book so everlasting.
Some Links:
Toni Morrison's "Beloved" (Magical Realism - now with ghosts!)Margret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale"
Frederick Douglass's Memoir (Finding parallels between Rufus's mother and Frederick Douglass's owner's wife. Thus showing us an important note that slavery destroys everyone involved.)
Naomi Alderman's "The Power"
Roots
Ursula K. Le Guin
Madeleine L'Engle
