Wench - Absolutely gut-wrenching
Ladies and gentlemen, this book is an absolute page turner while brutal, real and terrifying.
The review that hit this on the head is Randall Kenan's:
“Positively riveting. There will be obvious comparisons to classics like Beloved and Dessa Rose, obvious but deserved. Wench is risky, rich, confounding, maddening, satisfying, illuminating, and downright fascinating. Dolen Perkins-Valdez has created something fresh out of history known but hidden--something old, something new, something borrowed, and something definitely blue. But more, she has the audacity to challenge her readers to reimagine the Peculiar Institution of slavery in ways we Americans are only getting ready to face.”
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Book Summary:
An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses
wench \'wench\ n. from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.
Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret.
Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don't bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory–but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change.
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Guys my honest thoughts are that I can't put this book down, as much as there are moments that I really want to.
