dessarose

The author has organized the book into sections that were characterizations of Dessa. The names of the sections were The Darky, The Wench and The Negress. She goes back and forth in the time frame of Dessa’s story and makes it slightly hard to follow at first.

Chapters one and two introduce us to Dessa. Dessa has been accused of killing her master and is set to die by hanging. She has only been spared thus far because she is pregnant. She is being kept shackeled in the cellar of the Sheriff under lock and key. A journalist by the name of Adam Nehemiah that is trying to interview “The Darky” in trying to understand what would make

In my opinion, Sherley Anne Williams was most effective in taking the reader with her to the times of slavery and the slave’s perspective because everything was so detailed and she often wrote in dialect. The weakest part of the book was the story line of Dessa and Kaine that was a little vague and I never really knew exactly what happened to Kaine when he died.

Chapters three and four, The Wench, tell the reader of the two men, Harker and Nathan, that broke Dessa out of her bondage in the sheriff’s cellar. She is on the road with many others when she goes into labor and is taken to the house of Ms. Rufel. Ms. Rufel is a white woman that delivers the baby of Dessa and cares for the child until Dessa regains her strength. Dessa is confused to find the white woman breast-feeding the child when Dessa could not. Dessa is combative and delirious at times due to the exhaustion and drastic turn of events. Dessa soon comes to find there are many escaped slaves living and working the land of Ms Rufel. Ms Rufel’s husband has been gone for over a year and has spent what money they once had. The community sees the people living there as her slaves. They are very poor and barely getting by with the men doing some small farming and hunting for food. Dessa and Ms. Rufel do not particularly like each other but manage to tolerate each other.

All in all, I feel the book was educational and realistic. I enjoyed this book because I was taken to a time that is unfamiliar to me and it made me realize the suffering that was going on during this time period. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in African A

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