You Should Read: Kindred by Octavia Butler (with Bekki Fahrer)

Send a textIn today’s episode we are joined by our friend Bekki Fahrer to discuss one of her all-time favorite books (and now also ours), Kindred by Octavia Butler. This book broke so many barriers, and should be required reading for every American. Before you listen to the episode, we highly recommend you seek out commentary from Black reviewers and writers,  so you can hear about this book in their words and from their perspectives. We highlight a few examples below, including an essay on racism from the author herself, but there are many more. In this NPR piece, Lester Spence, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the importance of representation in Science Fiction writing, and specifically Octavia Butler's contributions to the genre: "She brought black people into the future when no one thought we had a future. In this, she was not only a genius, but a revolutionary."Here journalist Tanya Ballard Brown talks to Damian Duffy and John Jennings about converting Kindred into a graphic novel.We highly recommend this review (and many others) of Kindred by Antoinette Scully at Black and Bookish.  In this essay Octavia Butler writes about the human desire to establish hierarchies, and how important it is to resist those tendencies in order to instead promote tolerance and combat racism, sexism, and all the other “isms” that plague society. Butler, who died in 2006 at the age of 58, was the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur "Genius" grant and the recipient of several Hugo and Nebula awards.Need to order your own copy of the book? Check out Mahogany Books, a Black-owned bookstore in DC that specializes in bestselling and classic African American books.  Follow Bekki:Twitter: @Ginger_Sister Instagram: @bekki_the_gingernutGoodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3325348-bekki-fahrer  Follow us:Twitter: @wysr_podcastInstagram: @wysr_podcastGoodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/115539912-what-you-should-read-podcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfNtid_b0R14otSPRZTkmQwww.whatyoushouldread.com   Twitter and Instagram: wysr_podcast