"Kindred" ‘s plot is non linear; rather, it begins in the middle of its end and contains several flashbacks that connect events in the present and past. In an interview, Butler acknowledged that she split the ending into a "Prologue" and an "Epilogue" so as to "involve the reader and make him or her ask a lot of questions" that could not be answered until the end of the story. Missy Dehn Kubitschek sees this framing of Dana's adventures as Butler's way to highlight the significance of slavery to what Americans consider their contemporary identity. Because "Prologue" occurs before Dana travels in time and "Epilogue" concludes with a message on the necessity to confront the past, we experience the story as Dana's understanding of what we have yet to understand ourselves, while the "Epilogue" speaks about the importance of this understanding. Roslyn Nicole Smith proposes that Butler's framing of the story places Dana literally and figuratively "in media res" so as to take her out of that "in media res"; that is, to indicate Dana's movement from "a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences" to "a historically integrated identity" who has knowledge of and a connection to her history.