Kindred by Octavia Butler: Teaching Resources
NKU Book Connection
in a Writing Course: Kindred
All Northern Kentucky University students were required to read Kindred for
Fall 2004, so the NKU Department of Literature and Language contributed various
assignments related to the book. There are some excellent ideas for papers and
projects.
Kindred
Reader's Guide
An extensive guide worth consulting. Topics include Biography of Octavia Butler,
Interview with Butler, Kindred Discussion Points, Tips for Book Discussions,
Bibliography of Octavia Butler, Related Books of Interest, Photos of Butler,
Poets Respond to Kindred, and more.
Beacon Press Leader's
Guide to Kindred
Another extensive reader's guide. Go to the three "Sessions" for ideas
and discussion questions that tie Kindred to slavery, racism, and American culture.
Kindred Study/Discussion
Questions
There are dozens of questions re structure, themes, and characters in Kindred.
Kindred Short
Story Project
Students write a story to be published on a school web page. Teacher has included
reading assignments and a rubric.
An Octavia Butler
Bibliography
(Print) Works
About the Author/Octavia Butler Resources
Extensive list offered by Pasadena City College
Bookmarks:
A Companion Text for Kindred
"Bookmarks is a series of companion textbooks that provides teachers with
creative exercises and activities to supplement the teaching of a novel. Bookmarks
are integrated reading-writing skills texts that address each of the seven intelligences
identified by Howard Gardner: there are tasks/activities for the linguistically,
logically-mathematical, kinesthetically, spatially, musically, interpersonally,
and intrapersonally intelligent students."
Born in Slavery: Slave
Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
This collection from the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress
presents digitized transcripts of interviews of former slaves, conducted under
the auspices of the Federal Writers Project (FWP), a Depression-era Works Progress
Administration program that put unemployed writers to work. Users can search
the narratives by keyword, browse by narrator's name or volume, and search and
browse the photographs.
Criticisms
Allison, Dorothy. "The Future of Females: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode."
In Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology edited by Henry Luis
Gates, 471-78. NY: Meridian, 1990.
Foster, Frances S. "Octavia Butler's Black Female Future Vision,"
Extrapolation (1982): pages 37-49
Salvaggio, Ruth. "Octavia Butler and the Black Science Fiction Heroine."
Black American Literature Forum. Vol 18, number 2 (1984): pages 78-81.
“Folk and Urban Communities in African-American Women’s Fiction: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,” Studies in American Fiction 27.1(Spring 1999): 103-28.
"Slavery and Symbiosis in Octavia Butler's Kindred," Foundations: The International Review of Science Fiction. 84:1, Spring 2002.