Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

I have had this graphic novel for a few months now, lent by a coworker at the school I work at. I had to first finish the books I had gotten from the library before I could embark on the journey that this story had in store for me.

Kindred centers around Dana, a young black writer living in the 1960s with her husband. Her normal life is shattered when she is jarringly thrown through space and time into the antebellum south to save the life of a small white boy, Rufus Weylin. Rufus, it turns out, is an ancestor of hers. As the story goes on, she is constantly being tugged back to the past to save Rufus from some sort of mortal peril. She quickly realizes that each visit grows longer and longer as Rufus begins to depend on her to an almost unhealthy degree.

I really did enjoy this graphic novel and will probably read the original novel at some point. I do believe that this story would be much better to teach at schools rather than To Kill a Mockingbird to show the realities of the racism, discrimination, and cruelty faced by black people during slavery. There is nothing sugarcoated about the horrific realities faced by of millions of people. We see Dana take multiple roles with Rufus, starting out as a reluctant mother figure, a tutor, and mentor, and a caretaker. All of this is done unwillingly and she is, in a way, his slave throughout because she seems to be bound completely to his will. She learns quickly that slavery was not as clear cut as it is taught in schools. Soon, she has to think about what she is willing to do in order to survive, forced to go against her own ideals.

I do think that she thought she could change Rufus at the beginning, hoping to teach him to see black people as equals and human beings like himself.

Spoiler

I think that this naivety is a mark of what she had learned about slavery. White people just didn't understand that black people were equal to them. She soon finds that it is very different. As Rufus grows, he soon becomes a slaveowner, despite Dana's attempts to teach him otherwise. The first time she is called back, he is being beaten nearly to death for raping a black woman because he wanted her. None of Dana's lessons have stuck and Dana is left in a moral quandary: should she continue to save Rufus, thus ensuring that she is born in the future or should she allow Rufus to die? I believe that this is a question she wrestles with time and time again. The small sliver of hope she has that he will change is what keeps her saving him time and time again. It is only when he attacks her and attempts to rape her that she kills him herself. It was at that point she fully understood that the hatred went too deep. He would never truly see her or other black people as his equal. The men were simply labor and the women were meant to be used for his own personal pleasure. The development of Rufus's character as he grows more and more awful becomes the fulcrum on which Dana's own fate seems to hinge on.

I would definitely recommend that everyone read this. I think it's still extremely relevant.

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