Princess Joy L. Perry Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Q&A With Author Princess Joy L. Perry

Q: While researching your novel you visited old plantation sites, heritage sites, the Great Dismal Swamp, and other important locations. Why did you feel it was important to travel to these places while you were writing the book?

A: Because I live in a time so removed from the era in which the story is set, I needed to feel an emotional connection with Colonial Virginia. Reading triggered my empathy and my anger about the violence and injustice that facilitated slavery, but standing in places where slaves stood and withstood bondage allowed me to enter the past in a more complete way that is hard to put into words. Seeing a one-dimensional building on a screen is nothing like the visceral reaction felt when you place your hand in the imprint of an enslaved child's hand, as I did at Monticello, knowing that a child as real as myself—but hindered from reaching her full, personal potential—pressed her hand into that brick. Feeling the weight of iron shackles helped me better understand in my body what it might be like to carry those shackles.

I know that my experience was not nearly the same as that of those who were enslaved. I walked away from Monticello and back into my own self-determined life. I set the shackles ...