Kindred

Octavia Butler read slave narratives to research Kindred, Frederick Douglass's autobiography among them; the novel is modelled on the form, a first-person account of bondage, punishment and escape.

A critics' reading. Lisa Yaszek reads Kindred as a deliberate answer to the romanticised plantation of Gone with the Wind, written largely by white authors.

A critics' reading. Yaszek sees Kindred's visceral account of slavery as a criticism of how the Roots miniseries softened it for television.