Post #1 - My concerns with Slave Moth

I felt that the premise of this book seemed to call back to other such slave novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved sans all the mysticism and over the top violence. The main plot of this book I felt was wonderful, but not as accessible as I would have liked.

The layout of the paragraphs and how it was written in verse form seemed to hinder the movement of the story. This seemed to be a very original idea, but for me just lead me down a path of utter confusion when trying to decipher who was talking to whom about what, and what was going on in the story all together. I understand that as a writer you are looking for a way to re-invent the wheel, but this “verse” form seemed to draw more attention to the idea of trying to comprehend what was going on than it was to the main ideas moving the story ahead.

I understand that it could be considered that this was done for a reason, maybe to give the reader an idea of the importance of every word in the book much as every word on Varl’s “cocoon” was of a certain importance. This being stated it seems as if the author really took a long road to get to where she was going. Nevertheless, while reading this I found myself struggling, as some of the characters in the story, to understand and to follow what was going on not only on with the characters themselves, but with the relationships they had with each other. Just when I would begin to think that I had it figured out Varl would talk to Ralls Janet and my whole understanding would be blown away.

Maybe I am spiteful and unwilling to accept this form because I am not a fan of poetry and that I automatically denounce anything that seemingly stems from a poetic basis, but I really liked the idea of the book. I instantly was able to view the characters in a sense that I felt the author intended. The use of a vernacular that encompassed what I would assume to be the vernacular of an educated slave during that time also helped to make the story easier at some points and down-right confusing during others. I tend to forget that many of the expressions used by Varl have meanings that have been lost in time and now do not make much sense.

All in all the readings to this point have been fine, Drown is already surpassed Slave Moth in my mind, but I just do not know why the verse form was chosen as the form for this book. Again, I feel as if it would have been much more approachable in standard form, but then again I do have a bias against poetry. Who knows, maybe if I were more of a poetic soul, I would have something different to say about Slave Moth.