historical phenomenon that has lasting cultural meaning and enduring social consequences. This describes sufficiently in defining Kindred as a neo slave narrative and clarifies how Octavia uses slavery in her novel with the heroin, Dana, who investigates between her familial slave history in nineteenth century South and her own sight of slavery in twentieth century.
Kindred is the first person narration of the life story of a young Afro-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself travel regularly between past and present in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. Dana uncovers her family’s history and discovers a dark past. Her history starts with a slave owner’s son called Rufus and her survival means keeping him alive even when
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In the antebellum South, Franklin becomes very easy target of rape and the mere acknowledgement of her vulnerability as a colored woman arouses a feeling of shame. Through the narration, Dana’s efforts to defend her integrity are kept under threat a white man. Therefore, her home in twentieth-century California becomes a point of vulnerability, and her marriage to a white man is experienced as shame. On other hand, her decision to resist Rufus’s attempt of rape shows that she keeps her integrity. Dana’s first-person narrative claims the power that help her to share her own story and express resistance and defines herself through words. Kubitschek claims, a “personal narrative necessitates a construction or reconstruction of the self as character and thus offers power to the storyteller”. The heroine’s power is emphasized by how Kevin’s time travel is depending on Dana’s presence since she is his only way to the past. Octavia thus supplies her heroine with a subject position, which suggests a critique of African American women