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Octavia Butler's Kindred is a novel that refuses to let readers stay comfortable with their perceptions. Through Dana's terrifying time-travel into the antebellum South, Butler collapses the distance between past and present, forcing us to confront a history that many would rather soften or ignore. Early in the novel, Dana admits, "I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery," a moment that sets the tone for the book's central struggle. Butler uses Dana's shock to critique how modern readers often underestimate the psychological power of oppression.  One of the most striking elements of Kindred is how Dana must protect Rufus, the white ancestors whose survival ensures her own. This relationship becomes a brutal reminder of how history ties its victims and oppressors together. Dana captures the cramped moral tensions she finds herself in when she muses, " I felt almost as bound to him as he was to me." Butler uses this connec...

                                                                                  Ishamal Reed described Jes Grew as a mysterious "plague" of rhythm, joy, and expression that sweeps across America, with its heart at Harlem. However, Jes Grew is simply something that is intangible, yet can be felt through your soul and mind. It defines anything that is radical and doesn't conform to social norms at the time. Evolving how we perceive media and art. This epidemic threatened the quiet traditional ways of Western civilization because it is different and isn't really understood. But, while Jes Grew was portrayed as a fictional "disease" that became known as the Harlem Renaissance, it's pretty evident that Jes Grew never really ended, but simply resurfa...

Ragtime is a book that follows multiple different storylines. Throughout the book, we get a first-hand glance at how the characters change over time and evolve into their final forms. One specific thing that caught my eye is the transformation of the mother's younger brother throughout the novel. In the beginning, MYB (mother's younger brother) starts off as a timid young man who doesn't really have a purpose. He is mostly reserved and keeps to himself. His first step in his transformation is his discovery of Evelyn Nesbit. She is a model and female celebrity who is mostly famous for her beauty and her rich, crazy ex-husband.  As MYB learns more about her, he becomes more and more obsessed with her. He puts her picture on his wall and convinces himself that he is what she needs in her time of desperate need, when her husband is incarcerated for killing her ex-lover. His infatuation leads him to follow her around, which points to his need for meaning and purpose in his life....