Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Many books have been written about the South and slavery, but “Wench” puts a little different view on the subject.
“Wench” deals with fact-based history and adds the thoughts and emotions of someone who could have experienced it firsthand.

The story is set in 1852 at a resort in Ohio called “Tawawa House.” This resort is used as a summer retreat for Southern plantation owners and their slave mistresses. This part of the story is based on actual documented facts.

From this, author Dolen Perkins-Valdez weaves a fictional heart-wrenching tale of four slaves mistresses and their “masters.” She explores the complex relationship of each slave and their reactions to the people around them and the events unfolding at the time.

The story focuses on Lizzie, her interactions with two other slave mistresses, Reenie and Sweet, and their encounter with a fiery red-headed slave named Mawu their second summer at the resort.

Lizzie sees her situation different from the others. She believes herself in love with her “master,” Drayle, and that he loves her. She has bore his only two children, one a son that bears his name. Drayle has taught her to read, has moved her into his main house, he treats her kinder than any of his other slaves, and he takes her to Tawawa House without his white wife.

Lizzie believes he will one day set their children free and they won’t grow up as slaves. She holds fast to this belief and hasn’t considered seeking freedom for herself when at Tawawa House even though there are freed slaves nearby.

A series of events come about changing the lives of all who associate with Tawawa House. The reader is taken on a journey of suspension, betrayal, longing, and denial as the final days of Tawawa House play out.

Ms. Perkins-Valdez has done an excellent job of combining fact and fiction into this emotionally charged story. This debut novel could easily be turned into a series following the lives of Lizzie and her children long after Tawawa House.

On a historical note: The real resort was closed in 1855 and sold to the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. They opened  the Ohio African University here in 1856. Today Wilberforce University is located on the site of Tawawa House. Wilberforce is the nation’s oldest, private, predominantly African-American university.

"Wench" by Dolen Perkins-Valdez; HarperCollins Publishers @2010; ISBN: 978-0-06-170654-7; Hardcover, 293 pages.

Guest Blogger, Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Join me in welcoming Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of "Wench," as the guest blogger today on Thoughts in Progress.

Dolen is joining us today to give some background information on how she came to write "Wench." 

Dolen, could you tell us how your novel came about? Explain your historical footnote? 

My debut novel "Wench" began when I stumbled upon a fascinating footnote of history. While reading a biography of W.E.B. DuBois, I learned that during the 1850s, there was a summer resort near Xenia, Ohio, notorious for its popularity among slaveholders and their enslaved mistresses. I was stunned to learn this little-known historical fact. 

I decided to do a bit of historical excavation and learn more. At the time, it was very popular among the country's elite to visit natural springs. This particular resort opened in 1852, and became popular among southern slaveholders and their enslaved mistresses. I knew that Ohio was a free state and many of the northerners were abolitionists. Yet I was fascinated to learn that because they did not enjoy vacationing with the southerners and their slave entourages, they stopped coming and business declined. The place closed in 1855.

  

Most slaves did not leave written historical records. Yet I found myself entering an imaginative territory that would prove to be much more fertile than documents.

I began by asking myself the following questions: If the women entered free territory, why wouldn't they attempt to escape? Is it possible that they actually loved the men? As I made my way through draft after draft, I discovered that these were not questions easily answered. 

Even the answers I thought I would find turned out to be much more complicated than I'd imagined. The attachments these women had to their masters had many layers.  A 

As I approached the end of the novel, I myself did not know how my main character Lizzie would end it all. The journey of writing the book was probably as emotional for me as it has been for the readers who have e-mailed me about their captivating reading experiences of it. 

One question many people have about "Wench" is whether or not my character Lizzie was in love with her master Drayle. 

I don't know the answer to this question. I believe that love in the context of slavery is very, very difficult to draw a box around. Not only is it complicated in matters between slaves and their masters, but also between slaves and other slaves.  

The Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote, "O love is the crooked thing. There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it." If this is true in contexts outside of enslavement, surely it is even more so in the context of the "peculiar institution."

Dolen, thanks so much for sharing this background with us. Historical facts can be so intriguing.

Now for a little background on Dolen. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, African American Review, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, North Carolina Literary Review, Richard Wright Newsletter, and SLI: Studies in Literary Imagination. She is a 2009 finalist for the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Award. A graduate of Harvard and a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dolen splits her time between Seattle and Washington, DC. She is a faculty member of the University of Puget Sound where she teaches Creative Writing.  "Wench" is her first book of fiction. You can visit Dolen’s website at www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com, her blog at www.dolen.blogspot.com or connect with her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dolen.