Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
ISBN: 9780061706547
The
story is about four slave women. Three of them have known each other for years,
Lizzie, Sweet and Reenie. The other lady, Mawu was a new comer to their group.
They all were mistresses to their masters. Every summer they would go to Ohio,
which was a free state at the time, and stayed at Tawawa House Resort. Lizzie,
Sweet and Reenie had been visiting the resort with their masters for the last
four summers and were comfortable with their current situation. This was Mawu
first summer and she strongly disliked her extremely mean master and wanted to
escape into freedom. It didn’t take Mawu long before she began to talk about
escaping to the other ladies. The other ladies were too afraid to even
contemplate the idea. They knew that if they were to get caught attempting to
escape, there would be extreme consequences that they would have to face like
being beaten, sold to horribly mean masters and possibly even killed. They all
still had families that they had to consider. When back on the plantation their
lives were made just a little easier also. Mawu, yes had the chance to enjoy
time at the resort but her master was very mean and life was not as comfortable
for her as the other ladies. So, she was very determined to escape and to
attempt to convince the other ladies to come with.
On
the other side of the resort there was another resort which was for free blacks
to stay. Mawu would sneak over there from time to time. During her visits she
met some people that were willing to help her get her freedom. They gave her
information and a map that lead to different safe houses and abolitionist that
would be willing to help her. She tells the other women about the information
she received and tried unsuccessfully to convince them to go with her. Lizzie,
being naïve thought that she would be helping Mawu by telling her master of
Mawu plans to escape. Well, the totally opposite occurred. Mawu was beaten,
sodomized, and left bleeding perfidiously and unconscious. Everyone knew that
Lizzie had told therefore no one especially Mawu trusted Lizzie anymore.
After
Mawu recovered, it was still in her heart to be free. Another summer, and the
ladies are back at the resort with their masters, including Mawu. Mawu has now
met a white women and her husband which are both abolitionist. She began
sneaking off and spending a lot of time with them. Lizzie get a chance to meet
Glory and she gives her information so that she could read to the other slaves
that could not read. With her doing this she rebuilt all the lost trust they
had for her. The ladies began to think about freedom more and more. Sweet,
which was pregnant lost her baby and while grieving her baby was also informed
that all of her other children died back on the plantation from a cholera
outbreak. She was not strong enough to
survive the heart break, she died of depression and heart break. This convinced
the other ladies including Lizzie that it was time to escape. And the story continues …………….Will they
actually escape?
The
author captured my heart with this story. I have read several stories about
slavery fiction and non-fiction but this is a must read. The story made me cry
and laugh. It made my heart heavy to read about these ladies and it also fill
my heart with joy to know that through it all they had strong determination.
That inspired me a great deal.
This
book was actually suggested to me by the reference librarian at the library I
work at. I told her I wanted to read in a different genre from my norm and I
chose Historical Fiction. I thought this would be a challenge to read. It
started of slow but became a book I didn’t want to put down.
