WENCH by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.
WENCH follows the stories of four slave mistresses – Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu – over the course of three summers in pre-Civil War America. Taken by their masters on holiday to Tawawa House, a summer resort in Ohio, the women encounter free blacks and whispers of the abolitionist movement and are forced to consider their lives, their positions back home, and their hopes and dreams for the future. Dolen Perkins-Valdez was inspired to write the novel when she came across a footnote about Tawawa House, a real resort, while researching her own doctoral thesis on slave literature. Wench was borne out of the author’s musings on why, when presented with the possibility of escaping into free land, some slaves would run, while others would choose to stay with their masters.
We're certain that WENCH should be a provocative and discussion-worthy book, and we're looking forward to reading it with all of you.
Santa Monica Citywide Reads 2011 will take place from February 14 through March 12, 2011, and will feature free public book discussion groups led by volunteer facilitators and held in libraries, bookstores, coffeehouses, and other venues throughout the city. Related special events, including an author talk with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, are also being planned. Stay tuned here or visit our website at http://www.smpl.org/cwr to keep up with the schedule as it develops.
Tune in to Santa Monica's CityTV tonight at 7:00pm, for a one-hour, live discussion of our Citywide Reads book, Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This will be the fourth year of bringing the discussion to you live, in your own living room. The program will be hosted by one of our veteran book discussion leaders, Beverly Gray, with guests Max Diamond and Mary Menzel. This year, we'll also be welcoming Barry Kibrick, producer and host of Southern California’s premiere interview program “Between the Lines,” for a special appearance to provide his perspective.
Chris told three stories that inspired his decision to write Little Bee. While in high school, Chris was deeply affected when his school's principal shared a video with students of four young East Berliners risking life and limb to escape to the West. Video of that escape can be seen on Youtube in this German television video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUkimskFJ0w. Chris came away from that screening viewing those asylum seekers as heroes. However, by the time was 22, the world appeared to have changed. That summer, Chris was assigned as a day laborer to work at a newly-opened immigration detention center called Campsfield House near his U.K. home, and spent 3 days learning the stories of the refugees he met there from countries like Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Jamaica. At the time, he was struck by the fact that these asylum seekers were detained in prison-like conditions for indefinite terms, and treated as if they were criminals, when all they had done was flee horrific situations in their home countries. Finally, in 2005, he learned the story of Angolan asylum seeker Manuel Bravo. Bravo's story is a difficult one to hear, but there's a chilling account of it on Britain's Independent newspaper website, which you can reach via this link: http://bit.ly/cN1ai4. Finally prodded by Bravo's tale, Chris began interviewing refugees, doing independent research, and then spent roughly two years writing Little Bee. His intent was to take an unwieldy issue such as immigration and asylum and turn it into an intimate, accessible story that might challenge readers to think about the larger issue. As he pointed out to audience members, Little Bee is not his attempt to offer answers to such a challenging problem, but rather to start a debate.
