The Voice of Prostitutes in Wench

In this new series, I’m posting all my critical work from my MFA program and this one I discuss the use of dialogue in Wench, a fascinating book about a resort in Ohio where white slave owners would bring their female slaves for sex away from their families.

The use of dialogue in Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the primary driver of the plot. The book’s plot turns on the Tanawa Resort, where white slaveholders would take their enslaved mistresses to enjoy them away from wives and children. Much of the description, especially early in the work, is carried forward by dialogue. This passage from chapter two demonstrates the style of the book, “Mawu waved her hands when she talked. She flustered them about as if rearranging the air around her. There was a fluidity about the woman that made Lizzie take notice.” (pg. 10) 

Bearing that in mind, the reader has an image in their mind when the following conversation takes place on the opposite page, 

“You listening?” 

Lizzie nodded her head yes and looked back into the skillet.

“My mammy taught me how to make this. She said—“

“Your birth mammy?” interrupted Lizzie

“Course my birth mammy Ain’t you got a mammy?”

Lizzie shook her head. 

Even in moments of passion, the description is really transportation to the next powerful conversation of dialogue. The plot of the book is simple, but the dialogue is still a primary driver. Description does begin to abound by the middle of the book, as opposed to the first ten chapters.

 By the time we get to chapter twenty, the dialogue tells the reader a great deal of information. It is through description that we get Lizzie’s internal thoughts, but her relationship to the people around her comes right out in dialogue. In Wench, the dialogue is not just the words the character say, they have a distinct message:

Drayle pulled his penis out and rubbed the shaft of it. She turned her face away. She felt a sour taste rise in her throat. She blew out the stench between her lips. 

“Lizzie, there are some things you don’t understand.”

“What do you want me to understand, Drayle? I understand you want me to do that nasty thing,”

“What are you talking about?” It’s not some nasty thing. Women do it all the time for their men. Why there’s a woman in town who—“

“I ain’t like them women in town.”

“I’m not like those women in town.”

 “How many times do I have to tell you not to use the word ain’t?” 

The author uses dialogue as an entire style. It’s not just the words that characters need to relate to each other, there is so much subtext. We know from the passage preceding that Lizzie needs to keep Drayle, her master, happy and that she has borne him children. We know the stakes are high, but this scene of dialogue gives us the feeling that stakes are high. We get to experience that. This makes Wench a multisensory experience. What is astonishing that compared to other books, this work uses dialogue to create these special moments. There is this juxtaposition between Lizzie’s experience of the world, the people at the resort, and even her body and its sex, and yet the bulk of the actual story is told through dialogue. What’s astonishing is that it is not in “TV but written” sort of way, but in a way that sets up those special moments that give us information that drives the plot forward. The plot is simple, but it is relational. It is Lizzie’s relationship with white people, other black people, and her own children. We see her sacrifice her body over and over again in passages like the above. When she becomes pregnant and loses the baby, it doesn’t put of Drayle at all from continuing to use her body, and often the dialogue is just him talking at Lizzie as if she were a doll. This works because it is not obvious. It is a feeling. The reader must intuit, and that makes for a compelling style and a compelling work. 

This is an area in my work where I struggle. I’m always trying to fill scenes with subtext in dialogue. Occasionally, it works, and every so often it doesn’t. This is impressive because it is a whole style, an entire way of writing that is fascinating. I want to see if I can do more to create feeling on the page. I know I have done it, but it doesn’t always come off the way I want it to, and this is a great guide as to how to do just that.