Octavia Butler, Kindred
Lesson plans and teaching resources

Discussion points for readers of Kindred
An extensive set of discussion questions organized by category: the author and her craft, characters and motivation, issues and themes, and speculative questions.

Essay on Racism
Audio file of an NPR interview with Butler. Follow the link to the text of her essay.

Essay Topics
Scroll down on the page for a list of 10 possible essay topics.

Inverting history in Octavia Butler's postmodern slave narrative
Critical commentary on Kindred .

Kindred
This reading group guide includes a summary and discussion questions.

A Teacher's Guide for Kindred by Octavia Butler
10 days of lessons, including pre-reading journal and discussion questions; work with irony, paradox, and foreshadowing; comparing and contrasting characters, writing assessment options. Common Core standards indicated throughout. 22 pages; Adobe Reader required.

Travelling into the Antebellum South: Reading Kindred by Octavia Butler
A 5-week unit designed for grades 11 or 12. Students work with primary source documents accessed online via the Library of Congress. The unit includes handouts for literature circles, found poems, writing prompts, and assessment rubric. This 25-page document requires a word processor for access.