“I was reading the Biography of Race and stumbled upon it (Tawawa House) and when I went to visit I wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was receiving from the archives,” Perkins -Valdez recalls. “ The only way to get answers was to imagine it.”
The story is told through oral history and the gaps are filled in with historical fiction. Set in the 1850's, a decade before the Civil War, the story captures the tension between enslaved people who want to run away and those who would rather stay. The Tawawa House resort makes matters worse as it was located above the Mason Dixon Line where abolitionist openly discussed the topic of freedom. The book reveals how sexual relationships blurred the lines of slavery, giving an illusion of freedom, or even happiness. To complicate the idea even further the resort was eventually turned into a school where the offspring of these indiscretions matriculated. The school was purchased by Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne for the AME Church and is now Wilberforce University, the oldest private historically Black college or HBCU. Jayme Coleman, a 93 year old Wilberforce alum, says the sordid history of Wilberforce University was common knowledge among faculty and students.
“We knew the first students were mixed race children of slave masters," Coleman says. “The only people of color who had enough money back then to send their kids to school were slave owners.”
A Harvard graduate with a Ph.D in African American literature, Perkins-Valdez began to research the facts behind the resort and also became intrigued. She wanted to tell a story that had never been told through the eyes of an enslaved woman. Wench follows the main character Lizzie who believes she is in love with her master Drayle, but as the story unfolds the romanticized version of a mistress is shattered with the stark reality of sex slavery and the burden of womanhood. As each woman faces tragic circumstance common to chattel slavery, readers find themselves questioning if love can exist between a slave owner and an enslaved person.
Erika Webber, wife of NBA star Chris Webber, who was also in attendance at the talk given by Perkins- Valdez, says the subject matter almost most made her pass on the book
“Initially when the book was brought to my attention I thought it might make me upset, but I read it anyway. I couldn’t put it down and now I understood why she named it Wench.”
Webber like many of the other readers debated the numerous decisions made by the women. The book examines how each woman grapples with the choice to take their freedom or remain in bondage. Perkins-Valdez believes the women must have had some agency, though the window of power was very small.
“There were still ways in which she could maneuver, but he still owned her," Perkins-Valdez says of Lizzie “ I always thought there was a way they created freedom for themselves. There must have been a way slaves kept a little part of themselves to themselves.”
Perkins -Valdez reveals the secret language of enslaved women and how they navigate life as property. Sexually satisfying their masters is how the four women survived the harsh conditions of slavery, but the real heart break is watching their half - white children become socialized as slaves. The main character Lizzie is juxtaposed against three other women who she views as forced to be mistresses of their masters. Viewing the pain of the other women through a proverbial glass window, Lizzie begins to question the "relationship" she has with Drayle. The circumstances of each woman highlights the pain that comes along with yearning for freedom that is out of reach, but soon questions begin to bubble up as each woman asks themselves how much are they willing to risk for their own liberation.
“My obvious question when I heard about the resort was why did they go back down south? Ohio was a free state with a lot of underground railroad activity and slaves died trying to cross The Kentucky River into Ohio," Perkins-Valdez says. "I read about Thomas Jefferson taking Sally Hemming to Paris and she could have just walked away, but she didn’t. So I wanted to explore how an enslaved mistress who didn’t run, survived it.”