Compensation depicts two Chicago love stories, one set at the dawn of the twentieth century and the other in contemporary times, featuring a deaf woman and a hearing man. Played by the same actors (Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks), both couples face the specter of death when confronted with tuberculosis in one story and AIDS in the next. Inspired by a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (who died of tuberculosis in 1906, at the age of thirty-three), the film considers the ephemeral nature of love and life, while illustrating the enduring challenges of race and racism over the course of a century.