Urban Reviews - Your Source for the Best in AA Fiction!

INSIDE OUT with Dolen Perkins-Valdez Dolen Perkins-Valdez was born and raised in Memphis, TN. She is a graduate of Harvard and George Washington University. She has published fiction in The Kenyon Review and elsewhere. Wench is her first novel. Urban Reviews:  Tell our readers about Wench. Dolen Perkins-Valdez:   WENCH tells the story of four women who are the enslaved mistresses of their masters. They meet at a summer resort in 1850s Ohio and begin to contemplate escape when the spirited Mawu arrives. She pushes them to think about running and leaving behind their plantations. Yet the decision is a difficult one, especially for my protagonist Lizzie who believes she loves her master and that he loves her. The novel examines the complicated dynamic between a female slave and her white male master. Urban Reviews:  How did you come up with the idea for this book? Dolen Perkins-Valdez:   I was reading a biography of W.E.B. Du Bois and, during a section abo...