Throughout Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow, many characters must confront incredibly difficult situations that force them to evolve. These situations often challenge the characters’ value system and sense of self. Two characters that changed significantly throughout the novel as a result of their experiences are Dana Yarboro and James Witherspoon. They are forced to navigate through a world in which societal conventions and intense emotions inhibit their ability to thrive. Although both James and Dana attempt to have a relationship, James’ selfish behaviors harm Dana’s emotional wellbeing and ultimately destroys whatever bond they once had.…
Throughout Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred there are a lot racial contexts that revolve around time traveling. In the novel, readers are introduced to a black woman, specifically African-American by the name of Dana who has a white husband named Kevin. Within the story, Dana time travels and she finds herself retracing her ancestral roots and background through slavery. Realizing that she is in the 1800s, she begins to connect the dots every time she passes out and goes back in time. She tries to understand her family’s history when she is sent back to this era of slavery.…
In the novel, Silver Sparrow, by Tayari Jones, James Lee Witherspoon is living two different lives that arose many personalities from Dana Yarboro and Chaurisse Witherspoon. for example, Dana believe that her father is not right for her family, but Chaurisse sees only the good things James has done. Some of the reflections from his actions led to one family house hold having to live in the shadows of his main family. James also kept Dana away from her hopes and dreams because of his fear of being exposed to having a secret family.…
Silver Sparrow is an award winning novel written by Tayari Jones in 2011, with the setting of Atlanta, Georgia, her hometown. Jones uses many literary devices, one being character development, to help build her characters throughout the novel. One of the main characters, Dana Yarboro, risks everything to build a relationship with her secret half-sister, Chaurisse Witherspoon, only to end up with absolutely no relationship by the end of the novel. Throughout the second part of Silver Sparrow Dana risks everything she has with her father to reach out to her sister Chaurisse.…
Travels and Races Racial slurs have been common for centuries. Some are less offensive than others, but they still exist. As the only Hispanic in a primarily white school, I was often called “Mexican” and asked where my green card was.…
Slave of Time “Kindred” is a novel of time travel trauma and slavery. The protagonist Edana is a smart black woman who fights against everyday racism of her time. She is married to a white man called Kevin, a marriage that was not accepted by their relatives. One day Dana travels from her life in L.A. 1976 to antebellum south; a plantation in Maryland 1815. She travels back in time several times to ensure the survival on Rufus Weylin a white child that throughout the book becomes a explosive slave holder and one of her ancestors.…
The novel Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle. Dana is the secret daughter while Chaurisse is the legitimate daughter. The novel presents a wide variety of instances where intersections between gender, race, or class influence a character’s life. This novel shows how the identity of people change through the course of life and how it affects their interaction with other people in life. Dana is the daughter of James Wtherspoon and Gwendolyn.…
Right from the start, I already felt a sense of happiness as I was introduced to the introduction between Dana’s relationship with Kevin. When I get to hear about someone’s relationship within a story, I start to feel a bit more connected to the couple, making me even more invested into the story. It also gives me a sense of motivation to read even more as now I want to know what will happen to the couple during their journey. But despite all that, one thing that I was surely confused about was the two teleporting together to the past. As I recall, as Dana was about to teleport, Kevin was in contact with her, and yet, he did not go with her.…
In the novel, Kindred, Butler shows that gender plays a role in power dynamics in 19th and 20th centuries. This is shown differently with white and black women of both periods. , We, the readers, see how white women like Margaret Weylin are seen as inferior to their husbands, who have a public presence in society and can do as they please. In addition, society expects them to be nothing more than wives and mothers. On the other hand, black women are constantly victimized and treated inhumanly: 20th century women like Dana are still undermined by white men like Kevin, who is shown to reinforce patriarchal values through his treatment of her.…
In the novel Kindred, the main character Dana reveals how she is time traveling to a Maryland plantation in 1967, to conserve her bloodline. However, in this chapter the storm, Dana informs indirectly that Kevin and her made love. Nevertheless, Dana is drawn back to the past to save Rufus once again. Now, this time Rufus ends up with a horrible sickness known as malaria. Further on this chapter, Margret (Rufus mother) reappears after coming out of a mental hospital and is now trying to pretend to be the boss.…
This week we read Octavia E. Butler’s novel, Kindred. To summarize the parts of the book that we read, The Prologue and The River. First, in the Prologue, Dana, the main character, lost an arm and was at the hospital with medium consciousness and impaired speech and mobility. When she was finally able to speak the police officers asked if she could describe how she had lost an arm and who had done it to her. The officers tried to blame Kevin, Dana’s husband.…
Lack of Female Agency in Time Travel Texts In many seminal time travel texts, genders fulfill certain archetypes that arise from societal gender roles. In the movies Back to the Future and The Time Traveler’s Wife and the novel Kindred, females have less agency, power, and independence than male characters, showing how time travel texts are inherently sexist. In the movie Back to the Future, Marty McFly accidentally travels to the past, only to have his teenaged mom romantically pursue him, highlighting how female characters are often subject to the Oedipal complex.…
Growing up, we had to take around fifteen years of history classes, teaching us of the past and what our ancestors did. Did you ever think they not only taught us those things so we’d have bar trivia knowledge, but also as a warning? Unlike textbook readings of the past, where you have to wonder what it must’ve been like, Octavia Butler makes the readers of Kindred to actually place themselves in the 1800s, making them emphasize with Dana-our time traveling heroin-and the other slaves. Reading Kindred, one has to wonder, has anything really changed? There is still horrible cases of racism and prejudice in the United States, more than 300 years later.…