Novels that focus on traumatic events in history have used various tools to access the past. The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is a film (based on a play) set during the Great Depression, while Kindred by Octavia Butler is a novel set in the 1970s and part of the 19th century. In Kindred, protagonist Dana learns more about her family's past and the trauma they suffered during their time as slaves. Likewise in The Piano Lesson, Boy siblings Willie and Berniece, along with Berniece's daughter Maretha, learn the importance of their family's piano history in discovering what their ancestors experienced during the slave period. Both stories focus on learning, through the use of supernatural elements, about the traumatic experiences of the characters' ancestors and the importance of family and cultural history. Kindred and Piano Lesson use elements of the fantastic (e.g. hauntings and time travel) to access the past, because, through these elements, the stories engage and describe things to people in modern or near-modern times in ways they wouldn't be able to without them, and thus enhance their understanding of the lingering traumas of past slavery in the United States. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Before traveling back in time to Maryland, Dana doesn't know much about her family's past, she only knows the names of some of her ancestors and a couple of other things. Her cultural heritage isn't something that means as much to her as it would later, and she doesn't actually know how bad the slave times were. But then, after crossing the country for the second time to the nineteenth century and discovering the kind of violence that existed then, this becomes more real to her and not something that, even though she is still a part of, she is more detached from. She becomes willing to use violence on people who mean her harm, and when asked if she will use a knife, she says, “'Yes. Before last night, maybe I wasn't sure, but now I am.'” (Butler 47). Butler uses the supernatural element of time travel here to demonstrate that although people may think they know what happened in the past (from history books/classes or other sources), they often don't and won't be able to understand it fully if they weren't there. Dana's learning of her cultural history through time travel offers us, as readers, a way to better connect, because unlike cultural trauma stories where the characters come from a very different time, in Kindred , Dana has much more similar knowledge and feelings than characters from a time much earlier than the modern reader, so it makes the story much more real. By placing Dana (at first unaware of slave times) in the role of a “lone black woman” (Butler 47) in the nineteenth century, the reader is offered “a journey of discovery that mirrors that of the protagonist, allowing her to imagine a “mimetic encounter” with a trauma that he has not experienced and with which, moreover, he may not have a cultural connection” (Setka 96). This is because the reader is of the same or similar era as Dana and therefore accepts the new information Dana receives in a similar way to her. In the same way that Dana discovers more about her family history and cultural heritage in Kindred through her travels in With Time, Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson realizes the importance of his family's legacy and maintaining his family's piano.