what is a neo-slave narrative?

"neo-slave narrative" refers to contemporary, fictional stories and accounts of slavery

Unlike earlier works written by authors such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, neo-slave narratives are written by authors whose focus is not the abolition of slavery, but the amelioration of the wounds it has left behind; they seek reconciliation with a past that still haunts the present.

"contemporary narratives of slavery"

Rushdy asks the following questions: "What is the meaning of the particular aesthetic choices made by authors who were mediating between a nineteenth-century Ur-textual form and a late twentieth-century period of textual and formal play in American writing? Finally, we must ask, what is the political significance of this body of American fiction? What are we to make of this novel development in American culture at the end of the twentieth century?" (87).

His thesis? The form of the neo-slave narrative is unique in that it employs contemporary techniques to experience history and, in doing so, provides incisive commentaries both on the nature of the past and on the present. The neo-slave narrative is concerned with the past; but its implications rest in the present as well as the future.

Our Thesis? Kindred exemplifies the problems of memory and reconciliation that are central to the neo-slave narrative; it examines the loss of self, of body and voice, and the possible reclamation of the past for the perpetuation of the future.

Kindred and the Neo-Slave Narrative

There are three basic forms of the neo-slave narrative: the historical novel the psuedo-autobiographical novel the novel of remembered generations

Kindred engenders characteristics of all  three: set in antebellum south Dana's autobiography literal revisiting of ancestors, Rufus and Alice

In fact, Kindred is the epitome of a neo-slave narrative. Not only is the novel written by a contemporary author, its protagonist is a contemporary figure.

Dana cannot escape the legacy of slavery.

Her present is defined by a past she does not understand. 

And she cannot move forward in her life with Kevin until she understands her own past, until she remembers.