Personally, I don't think we should wait 'til college to start teaching this book to kids. I think it should be required reading for juniors or seniors in high school. I don't know if I'd give it to middle school kids or even freshmen, but I think 16 years old and up, the academic and mental readiness for this book is there.
Personally, if I were still a student or somehow found myself writing a paper about it, I think there's about 50000 interesting topics to be mined from this book.
I honestly think there's a very careful study in psychology to be made from this book, especially in studies of how dominance and abuse are transmitted to the next generation and how sociopathy can be learned.
Because Butler doesn't just write about slavery, she gets into the grist of systemized abuse and shows the mechanics of it so clearly that it's stunning. I really think there's another study in how abuse as a behavior system works.
I had students who said they'd never read a novel on their own tell me they stayed up all night reading it. It led to some incredible discussions. Just amazing.
I honestly think that's due to Butler's mastery of her craft.
One thing she does not get enough credit for is her ability to be subtle, to give information to the reader without having to look like she's explaining anything. I don't think she goes into a full blown exposition anywhere in Kindred, but she manages to explain everything that bears explaining.
Not only that, but she wins awards for clarity on the sentence level that you don't see much anymore.
It is an amazing novel. I'm glad to hear that students love this book as much as I do. I honestly don't think any Top 50 Books of All Time List is accurate or complete without this listed on it. I hope it lives on as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, period.
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Date: 2009-06-14 11:37 pm (UTC)Personally, I don't think we should wait 'til college to start teaching this book to kids. I think it should be required reading for juniors or seniors in high school. I don't know if I'd give it to middle school kids or even freshmen, but I think 16 years old and up, the academic and mental readiness for this book is there.
Personally, if I were still a student or somehow found myself writing a paper about it, I think there's about 50000 interesting topics to be mined from this book.
I honestly think there's a very careful study in psychology to be made from this book, especially in studies of how dominance and abuse are transmitted to the next generation and how sociopathy can be learned.
Because Butler doesn't just write about slavery, she gets into the grist of systemized abuse and shows the mechanics of it so clearly that it's stunning. I really think there's another study in how abuse as a behavior system works.
I had students who said they'd never read a novel on their own tell me they stayed up all night reading it. It led to some incredible discussions. Just amazing.
I honestly think that's due to Butler's mastery of her craft.
One thing she does not get enough credit for is her ability to be subtle, to give information to the reader without having to look like she's explaining anything. I don't think she goes into a full blown exposition anywhere in Kindred, but she manages to explain everything that bears explaining.
Not only that, but she wins awards for clarity on the sentence level that you don't see much anymore.
It is an amazing novel. I'm glad to hear that students love this book as much as I do. I honestly don't think any Top 50 Books of All Time List is accurate or complete without this listed on it. I hope it lives on as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, period.