SOURCE: "Slave to the Slaves," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4398, July 17, 1987, p. 765.

In the following review, Bucknell provides an unfavorable appraisal of Dessa Rose.

Dessa Rose is a novel about race and gender relations in the southern United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Slavery was then at its height, and Sherley Anne Williams turns the institution upside down in order to suggest that human relations were determined more by individual personalities than by social roles. Her plot is driven by the principle that a slave determined and clever enough could win freedom by violence or trickery; thus her black characters are not slaves nor her white characters masters. This makes for some provocative reversals, though it is hard to believe.

Dessa Rose is condemned to death for her part in a slave uprising, but her execution is delayed because she is pregnant. She is visited in prison...