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Octavia E. Butler's Kindred

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In his critical essay about Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred, Robert Crossley comments on the inaccurate nature of first-person American slave narratives. Dana, argues Crossley, “scorns the image of the plantation derived from Gone with the Wind, but she also learns the inadequacy of even the best books as preparation for her firsthand experience of slavery” (Crossley 276). According to Crossley, Dana learns quickly that the romanticized, rose-colored stories of the antebellum South are far from accurate. However, she also learns that regardless of the factual accuracy of the books, she is incapable of fully understanding the emotions of slaves. Crossley makes the claim that modern media is entirely insufficient at portraying the emotional

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