How Kindred Makes Slavery Feel Different
One of the biggest themes I took away from Kindred is how it tells a story that brings the past and ties it to the present. It led to the idea of how personal the experience must be for Dana. Every time she explained the context of her situation, the tone changed slightly, making me think about her perspective and how living in the past is changing her perspective, and in turn my perspective. She draws our attention to the tiny details, things that a history textbook wouldn’t be able to cover. While the textbook would make us look in disgust at slavery, Dana giving her take makes me as a reader understand the painful reality, and just how unfair society was at the time. Fiction is, to my surprise, able to convey a feeling about history that can't be taught by just the facts. Slavery is something the American school curriculum discusses heavily. I have probably been learning about the system since 3rd or 4th grade. But every single time we are taught, I feel like I have been told ...