Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - Yellow Wife

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Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

6 reviews

bandysbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

As an avid reader of historical fiction, I'd heard of this book several times, but only just recently got around to reading it. I want to say that I'm glad to have finally read it, except that I don't know if glad is the right expression for this book. Yellow Wife is the story of a biracial woman who is sold off to the owner of an infamous slave prison. He is taken with her beauty and whit and essentially forces her to marry him. What follows is the story of her life.

This book is a masterwork in historical fiction. It is inspired by a true story, but is a fictionalized account. Johnson does such a phenomenal job of making her characters real and creating a story that will haunt readers well after they put the book down. Some of that is due to the horrific scenes she creates to instill in the reader the unflinching truth about the inhumanity of slavery and some of that is due to the main character, Pheby, who makes impossible choice after impossible choice.

One thing in particular that takes a lot of skill in writing about brutality like slavery is finding the balance between creating horrific scenes that show the experiences of the victims and not making it so brutal that your readers stop reading. While this story definitely has some extraordinarily difficult scenes and Johnson is very detailed in her writing, I did feel that the brutal scenes she wrote about had a specific purpose both within the story and in the larger picture of remembering the atrocity that was slavery. It was brutal, but not gratuitous.

And I found myself so relentlessly rooting for Pheby. Every time you wonder how she could ever possibly keep going, she finds ways to endure. She is such a tough, strong, and eventually selfless character who struggles with the morality of what she has to do daily to survive. In the bleakest parts of this book, I kept reading because I just had to know what happened to Pheby in the end.

All in all, this is a well-written historical fiction about some of the unknown bits of slavery. It's about how women specifically were victimized and the ways that they overcame and continued to survive. I would definitely recommend reading the trigger warnings on this book before reading, but I unequivocally would recommend reading this too.

Trigger Warnings: Rape, Sexual Assault, Forced Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Torture, Whipping, Mutilation, Starvation, Sexual Slavery, Sex Trafficking, Severe Injury, Illness, Death, Infanticide, Slavery, Public Humiliation

Content Warnings

bookxcupid6's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Wow! I enjoyed This book thought it is very triggering because of how slavery is portrayed, how the white banked in joy at the misery of the black people become tell me why they were stacking chairs, setting up tables, lugging liquor, prepping food, blowing up” balloons, organizing games for the kids and instruments for the bandstand to celebrate like it’s a concert, not a flogging? It’s a show to them, an exposition of the power they want to hold on to badly.

Content Warnings