16 Kindred

In this novel, author Octavia Butler explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a time-traveling late 20th-century black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. 

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South where she has encounters with her ancestors and becomes entangled in the plantation community. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous.