When reading books from other decades, personally, I do try to keep in mind the year in which the book was written. In 1976 Octavia Butler wrote this book of which I believe must've broken barriers and turned the literary world upside down. First you have the time-travel aspect, a unique trope in itself as the reader has to suspend their sense of reality while reading. As for the protagonist, you have Dana, a young African-American woman with a white husband...an interracial couple living in 1976. On top of it all you have the horrors of slavery which Butler cleverly conveys through the eyes of both black and white people. These were all great components of the book however our issues arose in the casual acceptance of the plantation owners and slaves to accept a woman who appears/disappears at whim, is educated and dresses like a man. We didn't buy that. We also felt the language was a bit sophomoric but that could have been a result of the time it was written.