Study of Struggle for Self-Definition in Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose

Sherley Anne Williams was an emerging prolific African American writer. She was a poet, novelist, professor and social critic who emerged on the post-Civil Rights movement literary scene. The Peacock Poems, her first collection of poetry nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She published her powerful and promising novel Dessa Rose in 1986. Dessa Rose was a novel about slavery which explores the complex relationships between the blacks and the whites. Williams used two historical source materials for this novel. One historical incident was about a pregnant slave woman who revolts against slave traders in 1829, and second was about a white woman who saved runaway slaves in 1830. The novel combined the two stories and explored the meeting and struggle for self-definition of two women. It tells the story of a main protagonist of the novel, Dessa Rose. She was a black woman who had sentenced to death and Ruth Elizabeth Sutton, was white plantation owner, who had been abandoned by her husband.  Dessa and Ruth faced with serious difficulties and obstacles and tried to overcome by cooperating with one another. Dessa Rose was highly focused the struggle for self-definition rather than the plight of the slaves.