Kindred (the graphic novel version of the novel by Octavia Butler) asks a really interesting and difficult to answer question: would you save the life of an ancestor who you know is a pretty terrible person just to make sure you could be born? Of course, none of us would ever be in that actual situation, but it is the exact situation the main character, Dana, finds herself in.
You see, Dana is a black woman living in the 1970's with a pretty serious problem: she keeps getting sucked back in time to the days when slavery was legal - and every time it happens it is because she has to save the life of her great-great-great grandfather: a man she knows was a slave owner who forced her slave ancestor to have children with him. If Dana ever decides NOT to save his life, there's a pretty good chance she will never actually be born - or at the very least she could get stuck in the past for the rest of her life, and have to live as a slave.
Each time Dana gets pulled back in time, horrible things seem to happen: she even loses one of her arms, as she tells us in the first pages of the book. Yes, some of the stuff that happens to Dana put the "graphic" in graphic novel, but they are things that really happened to real slaves in our country's past. The book really makes you wonder how far a person can be willing to go to survive. You can borrow it at the link ---> here.
Official rating: 4/4 Booker Bears.
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