Octavia Butler's "Kindred" - anyone know of any quote-legitimate-unquote reviews?

[tzikeh]

I can find no contemporary reviews of Kindred, Olivia Butler's 1979 novel, from any of the so-called mainstream media. Nothing from the New York Times Book Review, nothing from The New Yorker, nothing from any "prestigious" magazines or papers. I'm presenting Butler and the novel to a class that a) doesn't give a shit about science fiction, and b) has nothing but contempt for reviews from smaller periodicals or specialized magazines. Never mind that she won two Hugos and two Nebulas; those aren't the PULITZER PRIZE or anything. Never mind that she is the only science-fiction author—not just the only female, African-American sci-fi author, or the only African-American sci-fi author, or the only female sci-fi author—the only science-fiction author to win a MacArthur Genius grant. EVER.They've never heard of her, and genre fiction is second-rate at best.

Don't hate me, but I am just too tired right now to die on this particular hill.

If anyone can point me to a review these lit snobs won't sneer at, I'd appreciate it.

Comments

[xebgoc.livejournal.com]

From Contemporary Authors. The bib at the end makes it look like there might have been in the Washington Post and the LA Times. I'll post it below.


FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

* Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 48, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.

* Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 8, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

* Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 38, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.

* Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

* Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

* Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 33: Afro-American Fiction Writers after 1955, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

* Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

* Newsmakers 1999, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

* Notable Black Writers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

* St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

* St. James Guide to Science-Fiction Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

* St. James Guide to Young-Adult Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

* Stevenson, Rosemary, Black Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia, Carlson Publishing (Brooklyn, NY), 1993.

PERIODICALS

* African American Review, summer, 1994, pp. 223-35, 259-71.

* Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, January 5, 1981; November, 1984; December 15, 1987; December, 1988; September, 1999, review of Parable of the Talents, p. 132; December, 2000, Tom Easton, review of Lilith's Brood, pp. 132-138.

* Black American Literature Forum, summer, 1984; summer, 1989, Adele S. Newson, review of Dawn and Adulthood Rites, pp. 389-396.

* Black Issues Book Review, September, 2000, Sandra Gregg, "Writing out of the Box," p. 50.

* Black Scholar, March-April, 1986.

* Bloomsbury Review, May-June, 1994, p. 24.

* Ebony, August, 2000, p. 20.

* Emerge, June, 1994, p. 65.

* Equal Opportunity Forum, number 8, 1980.

* Essence, April, 1979; May, 1989, pp. 74, 79, 132, 134.

* Extrapolation, spring, 1982.

* Fantasy Review, July, 1984.

* Foundation, spring, 1990, Francis Bonner, "Difference and Desire, Slavery and Seduction: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis," pp. 50-62.

* Janus, winter, 1978-79.

* Literary Review, April 1, 1995, Burton Raffel, "Genre to the Rear, Race and Gender to the Fore: The Novels of Octavia E. Butler," p. 454.

* Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1981.

* Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 26, 1995, p. 14.

* Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1980; August, 1984.

* Michigan Chronicle, April 26, 1994, Robert E. McTyre, "Octavia Butler: Black America's First Lady of Science Fiction," p. PG.

* Ms., March, 1986; June, 1987.

* New York Times Book Review, January 2, 1994, p. 22; October 15, 1995, p. 33; January 3, 1999, Gerald Jones, "Science Fiction," p. 18; June 6, 1999, review of Parable of the Talent, p. 42; December 5, 1999, review of Parables of the Talent, p. 101; January 1, 2000, Michel Marriott, "We Tend to the Right Thing when We Get Scared," p. 21; April 7, 2001, review of Parables of the Talent, p. 49; April 29, 2001, Gerald Jones, review of Wild Seed, p. 18; June 3, 2001, review of Wild Seed, p. 31; December 2, 2001, review of Wild Seed, p.74.

Poets & Writers, March/April, 1997, pp. 58-69.
Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1993, pp. 50-51.
Salaga (annual), 1981.
Science Fiction Review, May, 1984.
Science Fiction Studies, November, 1993, pp. 394-408.
Thrust: Science Fiction in Review, summer, 1979.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), March 31, 1996, p. 5.
Washington Post Book World, September 28, 1980; June 28, 1987; July 31, 1988; June 25, 1989; October 29, 1995, p. 8; January 24, 1999, review of Parable of the Talent, p. 9.
Women's Review of Books, July, 1994, pp. 37-38.

ONLINE
Locus Online, http:// www.locusmag.com/ (April 23, 2003), "Octavia E. Butler."
Times Warner Web site, http:// www.twbookmark.com/authors/ (April 23, 2003), "The Authors: Octavia E. Butler"; "The Books: Lilith's Brood."
Voices from the Gap Web site, http: //voices.cla.umn.edu/ (April 23, 2003), "Octavia E. Butler."

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were presenting to my U's English Department circa 2000

Here I go Digging

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

Nothing in:

London Times
Times Literary Supplement
Chicago Tribune
Washington Post


Reviews In:
Los Angeles Times "Notable" 8/5/1979 N10 (A short 1 paragraph blurb review)
(PM Me and I can arrange to get you a copy if need be.)

Library Journal 104 (14) 1585 - 1586 Aug 1979 It's 1/4 page.
(PM Me and I can get a PDF for you if need be.)

---

If you go to Google Scholar and put in Octavia Butler Kindred and limit the results to items published between 1979 and 1980 you will find a PDF of SF reviews in the TAMU institutional repository.

It lists only 4 magazine reviews for Kindred: 3 in SF Magazines (one of them is Kirkus) and the other is Library Journal.


:(

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

Not a review, but this is the earliest mainstream media mention I could find. (I had to cut this in two. She's at the end of the second part)

Otherworldly women. (science fiction writers) (illustration).

Life 7.(July 1984): p.p112(6). (820 words)
Author(s): Harald Sund and Nellie Blagden.
Full Text :
COPYRIGHT 1984 Time, Inc.

In the beginning there was space junk--not lost satellites, but pulp trash for boys. Today science fiction (or SF, as fans know it) has blasted light years beyond its origins, recently eclipsing the western as America's favorite fiction. Nor is it just for boys anymore. Today half the readers and some of the most prolific new authors are female--many drawn into SF by a subcategory called fantasy, which emphasizes people more and spaceships less. The women on these pages write both fantasy and technical SF. Their fictional dreams of other, often better, worlds have helped the genre outsell mysteries and romances combined--and made stargazing both respectable and lucrative.

ANDRE NORTON

In Winter Park, Fla., the garage has been turned into a library. Its reclusive owner, the first woman ever to win the prestigious Grand Master Nebula Award, lives with seven cats and doesn't drive. "I can't go out in crowded places," the former librarian explains. At 20, Alice Norton changed her byline to write boys' stories. She has since produced 84 SF books, like the Witch World series. Watching TV westerns helped her with space-age action scenes, but technology is downplayed in her work. "I cannot relate to machines," says the grande dame of SF, now 72. "I wouldn't have a word processor on a bet."

VONDA N. MCINTYRE

In science fiction the locales often are as important as the characters. McIntyre, 35 (at left, on the Pacific coast), is a biology graduate whose fascination with the sea inspired her to create for Superluminal a group of marine humans who live underwater. The author of two Star Trek novelizations is also intrigued with space and would leave Seattle for a trip off-Earth, but adds, "I'd like the option of coming back, mind you."

JOANNA RUSS

"Yes, I'm radical, but I'm not as angry as I used to be," says Russ, 46 (below in Seattle's Rose Garden at the zoo). The Female Man, her 1975 novel that featured a male-less Utopia, shocked readers with its fierce feminism and lesbian overtones. "SF has always been a preaching medium," says Russ, citing Mary Shelley's social commentary in Frankenstein and H. G. WElls's polemics. A graduate of Cornell and Yale Drama School, Russ almost gave up teaching and writing for five years because of mysterious back pain. "Most science fiction writers are utter misfits--they all wear glasses or have chronic illnesses," says Russ, who teaches English at the University of Washington. "It's easy to imagine that you're from a planet where things are better. Low gravity might help my aching joints."

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

URSULA K. LE GUIN

She and her history professor husband of 31 years live in Portland, Oreg., within sight of Mount St. Helens (in background, right). Le Guin, 55, thinks of the volcano as a "sort of companion." An SF star of the first magnitude, Le Guin's books, like The Left Hand of Darkness, are preoccupied with nature. "I can do without people a lot better than I can do without animals, plants and rocks," says the mother of three who studied French literature at Radcliffe and Columbia. She deplores America's Star Wars approach to exploration of space. "We put up commercial garbage," she says. "If they'd just send up one thin poet..."

C.J. CHERRYH

"Women are used to being on the outside looking in," reflects Carolyn Cherryh (right, in an infinity chamber of mirrors at a museum in her native Oklahoma City). The Johns Hopkins classics student and former Latin teacher wanted to be a space explorer as a child. Vicariously, she has succeeded. At 42, the author of Downbelow Station is known as one of the few women with a "hard tech" style--she writes about the nuts-and-bolts of space travel. On a customized Atari computer in her suburban home, Cherryh programmed a round-trip space ship route through the nearest 1,000 stars and showed it to her astrophysicist friends. They wanted to go with her.

OCTAVIA BUTLER

"Can't you write anything normal?" a short story teacher at Pasadena City College once asked her. "Everything I wrote had something strange in it," explains the author of six topselling SF novels (including Kindred and Clay's Ark). Encouraged by SF veteran Harlan Ellison after he discovered her in a screenwriting workshop, Butler is one of but four black writers in the field. She takes snapshots from Greyhound windows to serve as research on the desertscapes described in her books (like Joshua Tree National Monument at right). She also does background reading in a public library a bus ride from her tiny house in a "mildly seedy" section of Los Angeles. Some of Butler's characters--black and white--are inspired by her grandmother, a Louisiana field worker who transformed 160 dry California acres into the chicken ranch where the solitary child lived. "The people next door are boring," she says. "I write about those who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction."

Source Citation
Sund, Harald, and Nellie Blagden. "Otherworldly women." Life July 1984: 112+. General OneFile. Web. 2 May 2010.

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

Is Essence magazine mainstream enough for your students?

Kindred.
Essence 10.(Dec 1979): p.p22(1).
Named Works: Kindred (Book) Book reviews
Source Citation
Wilson, Judith. "Kindred." Essence Dec. 1979

(sorry, no full text)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

See, Essence is devoted only to African-Americans, and so it cannot be "objective."

*strangles*

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

*argh*

I was afraid of that.

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

This one is not mainstream media at all, and it's from 1986, but it might be interesting as literary criticism. If you want it, I can email it.

Title: Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel
Author(s): Sandra Y. Govan
Publication Details: MELUS 13.1-2 (Spring-Summer 1986): p79-96.
Document Type: Critical essay

[(essay date spring-summer 1986) In the following essay, Govan places Butler's novels in the tradition of slave narratives and historical novels.]

One more (L.A. Times)

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

Los Angeles Times
Title: Notable
Author: Paul Bond
Date: Aug 5, 1979
Start Page: N10
Pages: 1
Text Word Count: 1377
Abstract:
Kindred by Octavia Butler (Doubleday: $8.95) is both science-fiction and historical chronicle. In the 20th century, Dana is a black woman happily married to a white man; however, she travels back and forth

I don't have full text, so I can't tell from this if the whole thing is about Kindred or just the beginning.

Re: One more (L.A. Times)

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

1337 (Leet! Hee) Is the word count for everything on the page.

The Butler section reads, in its entirety:

---
Kindred by Octavia Butler (Doubleday: $8.95) is both science-fiction and historical chronicle. In the 20th century, Dana is a black woman happily married to a white man; however, she travels back and forth through a time warp, visiting the antebellum South. She experiences with a modern mind the the full violence of a slave's lot in an effort to keep her ancestors alive long enough to produce Hagar, the relative on whom her existence depends. Problems with causation damage, but do not defeat, a gripping story.

-- Judith Musafia

Re: One more (L.A. Times)

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

1337 (Leet! Hee) Is the word count for everything on the page.

Well, damn. Thanks.

[faos.livejournal.com]

It may be late (or redundant), but there's an LA Times article about her papers going to the Huntington Library:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/10/octavia-butler.html

Best quote:

Octavia Butler was not only an award-winning science fiction writer, but in a broader context, an important American literary figure, and her papers will be an invaluable resource for scholars,” said David Zeidberg, Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington.

I think there may be comments on Kindred in the article (cited below) written shortly after her death.

Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, Calif.
Subjects: Writers, Science fiction & fantasy
Author: Susan Salter Reynolds
Date: Mar 3, 2006
Start Page: E.1
Section: Calendar; Part E; Calendar Desk
Text Word Count: 926

Unfortunately, none of these seem to be actual reviews. Sorry.