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Title: Dessa Rose : A Novel by Sherley A. Williams ISBN: 0-688-16643-1 Publisher: Quill Pub. Date: 03 February, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A story of love and friendship
Comment: I found this book to be much more than the soap opera described by the reviewer below.
I found it to be a beautifully written portrayal of women being women in impossible times. I thought Dessa's story narrated to the white journalist was also a fantastic answer to both Gray's and Styron's Nat Turner.
I liked that Williams doesn't give in to easy answers and that the characters' relationships sometimes make the reader uncomfortable.
It was a gripping narrative, and I nervously read the last 10 pages as fast as I could to see how it would end. And the end brought tears to my eyes. (Of joy? of sadness? read the book!)
My one complaint is with editing. This edition is riddled with spelling errors (and I'm not talking about the dialectical spelling either...just flat-out errors!)
Rating: 1
Summary: So bad it deserves less than 1 star
Comment: This book is mistitled, it should be Days of Our Slaves because Dessa and the slave have no choice but to give into their istresses sexual and emotional demands. An inequality of power through one human being actually being the possession of another cannot broker to a "love story". Though touched on as an issue. Thsi book decides to take the cheating/easy way out and equate this power imbalance to "love". Deplorable. I studied/worked on this book in a high level college class that related Slave Narratives and Sadomasochism. This book does play around that area, as does the Black Book by Mapplethorpe and Langston Hughes travel books. THe Slaves Narratives/Incidents in teh Life of a Slave Girl is a stronger book though I have issues with that as well.
Don't get me wrong I appreciate the strength fo the writing AS writing. However I have studied and taught African American literature so I have a keen understanding as to the problems, one of which is that if it is African American pablum is tllerable within the genre now. The freedom of mass publication and right to produce literature has been reduced to normalized American pablum. Therefore this kind of literature has availed itself to the destructive consequences, which is thorough criticism and dissection.
Rating: 5
Summary: Heartfelt look into slave life......
Comment: I recently picked up an old copy of Dessa Rose and began to read. Although I found it slow in the very beginning, it became one of the few books I can truely say I couldn't put down. Anyone that is interested in slavery should read this book. It is an eye opener for sure.
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Title: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0807083054 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Corregidora by Gayl Jones ISBN: 0807063150 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 15 February, 1987 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: MIDDLE PASSAGE by Charles Johnson ISBN: 0684855887 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Beloved by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452280621 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson ISBN: 0452275032 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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