The Cross-Cultural Center, Campus Diversity Initiative and Pathways Program are proud to announce this year’s selection for our 6th Annual One Book, One College program, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred.

Octavia E. Butler is widely recognized as an unparalleled writer of science fiction and one of the creators of Afro Futurism. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards and a MacArthur Fellow, she is one of Pasadena City College’s most distinguished and accomplished alumna. As we mourn her loss ten years after her untimely passing, we celebrate her life and her incredible body of work. We invite all members of the campus and larger community to attend the Speaker Series that has been designed to accompany the shared reading of this text. Copies of Kindred are available in the Shatford Library and PCC bookstore.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Published in 1979, Octavia E. Butler’s novel employs time travel to transport the heroine, Dana, a struggling black female writer in 1976 Altadena to 1820s Maryland, where she encounters her ancestors, both slave and slave-owning. A comment from one of Butler’s classmates at Pasadena City College is credited with inspiring Butler to write Kindred, a genre-shattering novel which explores the historical and relational complexities of slavery through the lens of a strong, educated black woman raised in a radically different time and place. In her own words from a 2004 interview, with this book Octavia E. Butler “set out to make people feel history.”

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Copies are available for review in Shatford Library. 

For more information, please email serose@pasadena.edu.