Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation - by Octavia E Butler

Kindred - A Graphic Novel Adaptation of Octavia Butler's Masterpiece Get ready to be transported through time and space with this gripping and thought-provoking graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's Kindred.

This New York Times bestseller tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South.

As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is free and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a Southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana's own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. This graphic novel adaptation is a perfect candidate for the graphic-novel format, with taut adaptation and John Jennings's tense, electric renderings vibrating throughout, pacing and containing, then pushing every ounce of discomfort to the forefront.

Comics and science fiction exploit their greatest shared strength by illuminating the mundane that surrounds us, allowing any reader to critique and process our world with new vision. Butler's original novel is a powerful commentary on how the past informs the present and how we engage with both.

But this adaptation makes an even more vivid statement about black Americans' relationship with history.

The kinetic lines feel urgent, messy, and visceral.

The colors for scenes set in the present are muted while the colors of the past are vibrant, almost like a bright wake-up call to reality. In its illustrated form, Kindred receives a new identity of sorts, while retaining all of the complexities, politics, and moral questions that propelled its author to literary icon status.

The book belongs in every library