The Image Of Whiteness In Dessa Rose

As a poet, novelist, dramatist and critic, Sherley Anne Williams combines in her work a keen sense of the tradition of black oral and Western literary forms with the concerns of class that are often hidden by race in contemporary American literature. Dessa Rose, Williams’first novel, best represents her special writing style. It reflects her deep knowledge of African American history as well as the musicality of oral tradition. The preceding studies on this novel have been focused on the analysis of the issue of black female slaves in history, narrative strategy, race and the oral tradition in the book from different theoretical perspectives. This thesis uses post-colonial theory and feminist theory to analyze the images of whites in Dessa Rose.As African American literature has become more and more influential in American, the issue of writing white in black writing has attracted more and more critics’attention. In the black writing, whiteness is a representation of terror. It invokes black people’s traumatic pain and anguish. In Dessa Rose, Adam Nehemiah, a white writer, represents the power of writing. He demonizes Dessa in his "book" by using the power of naming and inscribing black experience. Rufel, the white woman who gives sanctuary to the fugitives, is created as a victim of the patriarchal society. But at the same time, influenced by white racism, she is blind to the sufferings of the black slaves. Her assumption that she is superior to the blacks prevents her from realizing that she is a victim of the white patriarchal power. At last, Dessa makes the white writer’s attempt to write her impossible by privileging the black spiritual, one form of the black oral tradition over the power of writing. And both Rufel and Dessa overcome whiteness by abandoning their prejudice against each other.