SOURCE: "Everybody Knows Her Name: The Recovery of the Past in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose," in Callaloo, Vol. 12, No. 3, Summer, 1989, pp. 544-58.

In the following essay, Davis discusses the significance of names and naming in Dessa Rose as well as historical aspects of the novel.

Not having been around people very much who are dying, I did not know until then how it felt to see somebody walking down the hall tonight, then not see them in the morning because they are gone. Gone with a big letter, gone with a capital G. I mean solid and really not-here-no-more—gone. Silent, with nobody to scream. Nobody like Zarita around to make a big noise, nor Joyce to cry sweet and polite. Nobody to yell, 'He's gone.' His name I can't recall. But maybe why I remember that man in Baltimore so well is because there was...