| Abstract |
A Brilliant Narrative in Verse, Slave Moth follows Varl, a slave girl on the Perry Plantation in Tennessee, on her path to freedom. Varl has learned to read and write and is wildly creative, wise beyond her years, and full of love: for her Mamalee (who educates runaway slaves); for her friends, especially the handsome Dob; and for the cotton fields she has explored throughout her childhood. More than anything, Varl loves words and the freedom they give her mind and spirit. She spends each spare moment secretly embroidering her extraordinary thoughts into her clothing, making a cocoon of words from which she plans to one day emerge transformed and truly free. Yet Varl knows she cannot be free in mind alone. Over the course of the narrative, she plots her escape. As she plans, she feels herself ever closer to emerging from her cocoon and into liberation. In the end, the freedom of body Varl craves will depend upon the strength of her formidable spirit -- a spirit that her master, Peter Perry, is intent on quashing. In Slave Moth, Thylias Moss takes a fresh look at the meaning of slavery and of freedom. Once again she shows herself to be "a visionary storyteller, who has a sense of history and the complexity and variety of experience in America" (Charles Simic). Written in gorgeous verse, this story is an explosion of life in the face of servitude. |
