Time Travel is Real
(Title unrelated) In Kindred, written by Octavia Butler, we follow Dana, a black writer, throughout the early 1800s and late 1900s as she is forced to experience history literally firsthand. During this extremely eventful period of her life, Dana faces physical, mental, and ethical challenges, a raw, unfiltered view of history, and ultimately she changes the way she views the world. The exact means of Dana’s time travel is left unquestioned and unanswered. This is because the reason has no importance; Butler never explains it because it would only distract from the point of the convention. The purpose of the incorporation of time travel is to attempt to answer a hypothetical question, while also pushing a compelling point about American history. Anyone can sit down and read a history book about slavery, however it is impossible to convey the reality of the full extent of it. Butler knows that not just any reader can relate to a slave; the life of an enslaved person is so drastic...