Octavia Butler created "Kindred" as a response to one of the prevailing notions in the 1970s Black Power movement regarding previous generations' seemingly quiet forbearance under slavery and Jim Crow. To some who engaged with this school of thought, domestic work was looked down upon, similar to how enslaved cooks and housekeepers were viewed in hindsight as lesser than those forced into hard labor.
Butler's "Kindred" heroine Dana is a corrective to this – a resilient young Black woman who has settled in Los Angeles and for reasons she can't understand finds herself careening backward in time to a 19th century Maryland plantation for unpredictable periods before leaping back to her present.
