Customer Reviews

Dessa Rose

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Williams has taken us into the mind and soul of a slave and recreated Dessa's experience with a searing feeling of authenticity. This is a notable piece of fiction; it should be part of history courses studying slavery.

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.

I purchased Dessa Rose as resource for my Thesis work. I was told that it was a fictional account of a meeting between a real slave woman and white abolitionist. It was one of many resources, but it was the most surprising. I did not know what to expect. In the end, I was pleased. I recommended that the book be added to the syllabi for our Black Women Writer's Course next Fall.

This was a great purchase! I needed the book for school, and it shipped quickly so that I jad it in time for class. Quality was everything I expected, and service was excellant.

I got this book after I saw the musical. I wasn't disappointed. Great story, gripping tale.

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.