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''Kindred'' is a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler . While most of Butler's work is classed as Science Fiction , ''Kindred'' is often shelved in Literature or African-American Literature , and Butler herself categorized it as "a kind of grim fantasy". {Link without Title} The novel tells the story of Dana, an African-American woman living in 1976 who is repeatedly thrown back in time to the Ante-bellum South, apparently summoned (through means that are never explained) to rescue a young white person, the son of a Slaveowner , who turns out to be the woman's ancestor. She is forced to deal with a time and place where her choices are almost completely circumscribed by the color of her skin. "I was trying to get people to ''feel'' slavery," Butler said in a 2004 interview. "I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people." In another interview, she said, "I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you." [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/260959_butlerobit26ww.html The book is set on Maryland 's Eastern Shore. Butler said she chose the setting "because I wanted my character to have a legitimate hope of escape," and because two famous African-Americans, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman , had been enslaved there. {Link without Title} ''Kindred'' became the most popular of all of Butler's books, with a quarter of a million copies curently in print. {Link without Title} It is frequently assigned in high school and college classes. REFERENCES
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