Rose: Literacy

             I found the setup of the narrators in the novel "Dessa Rose" interesting. On one hand, told in the first person is Dessa's story, in which she is an authentic African American woman, that has a hard time with literacy, and cannot read or write. Her voice in the story, is a voice that strains to be heard, and never really gets her point across, as a slave. Yet, the Williams sets her up next to Nehemia, who is not only white and literate, but compiling information to write on. He uses his langauge and skills of langauge to force her into answering his questions. Though, Dessa has a casual expressiveness, even if her vocabulary is not as "refined" as Nehemia's. Lastly is added Ms. Rufel's addition which displays the view of a white woman, though so is not so typical as she is harboring slaves to help set them free.
              Another interesting aspect about he story is that in the beginning based on the prologue, one would assume that the story would be about love, and passion between a man and woman (Dessa and Kaine), but eventually it becomes about a woman and woman (Dessa and Rufel), getting over their prejudices and learning to respect one another. The women seem to bond over both being opressed by the "man" or even "white man", and there seem to be many signs of this throughout the novel. Although Dessa is opressed to her breaking point in many ways, such as he violence upon the slave owner, which leads to her punishment of death, she was also opressed in what seem to be other ways as well. When discussing the lashings from whips on the insides of her legs it seems as though she was "symbolically raped", which is often considered for women the most violent thing that one can imagine.
           I felt that the novel surprised me in a lot of ways, and took some turns that I wouldn't have seen coming, but that made sense when they did. I liked the three characters that formed opposite, but also similar discussions of many of the same issues.