Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
Books about slavery are never easy reads. YELLOW WIFE, by Sadeqa Johnson, is no exception. Taking place in the late 1800s, the novel’s protagonist is Pheby Delores Brown. We meet her on Bell Plantation in Virginia. She is the daughter of a slave and a slave owner, Master Jacob. The first antagonist of the novel is Missus Delphina, Master Jacob’s wife. Missus Delphina has a generally nasty disposition, made all the more surly by the fact that she’s aware that Master Jacob has slept, and is currently sleeping with, Pheby’s mama. Pheby is a mulatto, who has been told by her mama that though she is a slave in name, she should never think of herself as a slave in heart and mind.
This is admirable, but for the times, also extremely risky. The white masters of the day owned the slaves legally and could do with them anything they pleased. When Pheby’s mother dies in a horsing accident, Pheby is left at the mercy of Missus Delphina. Pheby, who has her mama’s words always in mind, “You a slave in name, but never in your mind, chile”, stands up to the petty cruelty of Missus Delphina and is promptly sold off the plantation. From there, she ends up the mistress of Marse Lapier, who runs a jail referred to as The Devil’s Half Acre. Marse Lapier is an awful human being who sells slaves in his tavern, particularly young mulatto girls like Pheby who end up being prostitutes for white men. He thinks of blacks only as if they are items, and treats Pheby like an animal meant only for rough sex and producing children.
YELLOW WIFE covers all of the horrors of slavery. There are whippings, some so severe that for many it will be difficult to read. There is sexual assault, there is rape, there is the tearing apart of mothers from their children. There is infanticide, there is coercion, there is deception, there is emotional abuse. For those who have read slavery narratives before, they will find many details that are similar in YELLOW WIFE to other books about slavery. For those who are wholly or mostly ignorant on the horrors of slavery, YELLOW WIFE is a novel to enlighten you on only one of several of America’s dark histories, a past that many today would prefer remain unmentioned, forgotten, or rewritten to whitewash the awful atrocities that built this nation.
We all know how the chapter of American slavery ended, so the conclusion of YELLOW WIFE holds little surprise. However, getting to the end is strolling through hell, as the descriptions of the events in the book are very graphic. This is not a narrative for the faint of heart, and Sadeqa Johnson means for readers to take away with them the scar of slave history in America long after the last page has been read.
