Book World: An enslaved woman becomes her own savior
Ellen Morton, The Washington Post
Jan. 13, 2021
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Through the eyes of a character with uncommon access and compassion, Sadeqa Johnson s novel The Yellow Wife evokes a vision of one woman s tenacious survival of antebellum cruelty and objectification.
The daughter of an enslaved healer and seamstress and her White master, Pheby Delores Brown grows up in a kind of in-between state. Problem with being high yella, an enslaved woman tells Pheby after her father s wife slaps her, that handprint gonna be on your face all day long. Though she labors on the plantation, her father secretly encourages her education and assures her she ll be freed on her 18th birthday.