Of the characters in Octavia Butler's Kindred, one stands out as it forces readers into a particularly uncomfortable moral dilemma. From a zoomed out perspective, Rufus Weylin is just evil. He is a slave-owning Southern man who actively engages in brutal violence including the rape of Alice and the constant threats to beat Dana. However, Butler's narrative constantly provides the smallest slivers of redemption, making Rufus a controversially sympathetic villain that causes clearcut interpretations of him to be completely inadequate in describing him. To call him a one-dimensional monster would be reductive, as he is certainly capable of what seems like genuine affection and kindness (at least, in his time period). He loves Dana in his own twisted way, as she acts as his confidante and supernatural guardian angel, constantly saving him from danger. In some cases, Rufus even shows a desire to be a better person than his father Tom Weylin. But his actions are still obje...
Historiography sucks. It's one of the most annoying subjects to discuss because of its abstract nature, but Ishmael Reed has created a very compelling study of this that I can't help but explore. However (I just need to complain about this real quick), not only is it very confusing to piece together the big picture, but the book also reads like a bomb went off in a library and the whole mess about its stylistic decisions—not following standard conventions, settings jumping from chapter to chapter, footnotes for some reason, etc.—is the debris. This debris has to exist, though, because trying to tell this chaotic cultural narrative in a straight line makes it even worse. Like many of its contemporary works, Reed's Mumbo Jumbo has a very distinct method in how it narrates history. While history is usually read as a passive linear record, Reed uses it as an active battlefield of cultures. The novel puts two fundamentally opposing versions of the...