I love coming across a new author and
a first novel. According to her website,
Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Story Quarterly, Story
South, and elsewhere. In 2011, she
was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award
for fiction. She was also awarded the
First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library
Association. She received a DC
Commission on the Arts Grant for her forthcoming second novel, Balm.
Dolen teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine. She is a graduate of Harvard and a former
University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA. She is a popular guest for Black History and
Women's Month programs. Dolen lives in Washington, DC with her family. Wench
is an absorbing, heart rending story of a group of women slaves in the middle
of the 19th century.
I have read a number
of African-American novels in my time.
Among these are Beloved (and
others) by Toni Morrison, Eva’s Man
by Gayle Jones, and of course, the novels of Zora Neale Hurston. While they all contained horrific accounts of
African-Americans, and all were compelling and well-written, none had the lyric
beauty of Dolen’s prose. The novel has a
number of pastoral scenes frequently interrupted by the horrors of slavery.
The novel centers
around four slaves, Sweet, Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu. All are owned by men with a varying degree of
concern for their slaves. Lizzie was the
mistress of Drayle, who treated her better than most slave owners, but,
nevertheless he was not above slapping or raping her. She knew early on Drayle’s wife was unable to
conceive, and so after Lizzie twice became pregnant, her focus shifted to her
son Nate and her daughter Rabbit in hopes of earning their freedom.
Perkins-Valdez
writes, “The slaves had been back at Tawawa house for only a short time before
Mawu was spotted sweeping her cottage porch as if she’d never left. As they passed one another, they gave the
silent signal to meet at the stables that night: eye contact, a glance in the
direction of the stables, and brushed fingertips down the forearm to signal
dusk” (34). These women were
resourceful.
As the women became
acquainted with Mawu, she told her story.
Dolen writes, “Mamu told them she was telling her story so they would
know why she couldn’t go back to Louisiana, why she didn’t feel the same pull
they felt toward their children. She
didn’t live in the big house like Lizzie.
Her children did not have special favors like Sweet’s. She hadn’t had a cabin built for her like
Reenie. She was just a slave like any
other – beaten, used, and made to feel no different than a cow or a goat or a
chicken” (42). Later in the novel, Wamu
was whipped into unconsciousness because her owner, Tip, heard she was thinking
about running away.
Because of her
special “relationship” with Drayle, Lizzie was taught to read. Perkins-Valdez writes, “As Lizzie learned the
meaning s of new words and what the letters looked like on the page, it became
more difficult to hide the fact she could read.
She wanted to read everything.
She scanned the spines of books along the shelves in Drayle’s
library. She looked over [Mistress]
Fran’s shoulder as she cleaned around her, straining to make out the
handwriting of Fran’s mother. She wanted
to read to the slaves in the cabins.
There was only one man among them who could read the newspaper, and
Lizzie thought she might be able to read as well as he could. She wanted to show him up, prove that women
could learn, have everyone’s eyes hungry for her mouth to open and turn the
piece of pulp in her hands into hope” (94-95).
Despite living under the most extremely horrific circumstances, the
thirst to learn burned in Lizzie’s heart.
Time and again, when
things seemed hopeless, and one of the women said they needed the help of a man,
“No. […] Us can do this our own selves” (187).
Near the end of the novel, Lizzie thinks about her daughter. Dolen writes, “As she leaned against the
porch post, she thought of Rabbit and what she would teach her. This was what she would say: Don’t give in to the white man. And if you have to give in, don’t give your
soul over to him. Love yourself
first. Fix it so you don’t give him
children. If you ever make it to
freedom, remember your mammy who tried to be good to you. Hold fast to your women friends because they
are going to be there when ain’t nobody else there. If you don’t believe in God, it’s all
right. God believes in you. Never forget your name. Keep track of your years and how old you
are. Don’t be afraid to say how you
feel. Learn a craft so you always have
something to barter other than your private parts” (287-288). I find it difficult to imagine a mother
having to give her daughter advice like this.
It reminds me of the mothers in Ferguson, Chicago, Philadelphia, and
other cities where woman have to teach their children to fear the police and
how to act if stopped. This passage
brought tears to my eyes.
The strength,
courage, intelligence, and persistence of these four women was heart-warming,
and, sometimes, horrific. But against
overwhelming odds, these woman managed to maintain their dignity and raise
children, all the while under the constant threat of the whip. Wench
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a tremendously inspiring story. While not sugar-coating the horrors of
slavery, it demonstrated how – under incredibly difficult circumstances – they
were able to maintain a sense of decency to pass onto their children. 5 stars
--Chiron, 4/30/17
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