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superwritermom 's review for:
Yellow Wife
by Sadeqa Johnson
I read this book in a day.
I'm not sure I have collected all of my thoughts yet, but it's a masterpiece. Heartbreaking but hopeful, brutal but tender, this is ultimately a story of a mother's love for her children.
How anyone could read this book and doubt the horrors of slavery, I'll never know. It was never a question before I read the book, but Yellow Wife brings into sharp relief the horrors of this chapter of American history and how we can't improve until we see those horrors and vow to do better.
Often books about the period focus on the viciousness of many of the white men. Johnson doesn't shy away from the viciousness of the white women. It's a horrible, terrible, humbling thing to think that one of my ancestors might've been like the mistress of the house or the jailer, but that's a possibility--a probability, even--we Southerners need to reckon with.
I'm not sure I have collected all of my thoughts yet, but it's a masterpiece. Heartbreaking but hopeful, brutal but tender, this is ultimately a story of a mother's love for her children.
How anyone could read this book and doubt the horrors of slavery, I'll never know. It was never a question before I read the book, but Yellow Wife brings into sharp relief the horrors of this chapter of American history and how we can't improve until we see those horrors and vow to do better.
Often books about the period focus on the viciousness of many of the white men. Johnson doesn't shy away from the viciousness of the white women. It's a horrible, terrible, humbling thing to think that one of my ancestors might've been like the mistress of the house or the jailer, but that's a possibility--a probability, even--we Southerners need to reckon with.