In August, the Village Literary Club will read Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979/2003, 264 pp, fiction). This book was written in 1979 but its insights are as fresh today as they were revolutionary then. Octavia Butler is a Black science fiction/speculative fiction writer who is finally gaining the recognition she deserves. Kindred, her best known work, is a time-travel novel for those of us who do not often read time-travel books. The main character, Dana, moves between her life as a slave on a Maryland plantation and her life in Los Angeles in 1976. Here’s how a New York Times critic writing this year describes the book: “Butler takes time-travel ….and infuses it with lasting power. In Butler’s hands the slaves and slave owners Dana meets become individuals rather than historical abstractions. The book is a marvel of imagination, empathy, and detail, speculative fiction at its best.”

Members and social members 

Capacity: 20