Slave Moth

Named by Black Issues as the best poetry book of 2004, this is the astonishing story of a slave girl in the antebellum South.

This critically acclaimed verse-novel follows the unforgettable Varl, a slave on a plantation in Tennessee, on her path to freedom. Wise beyond her years and wildly creative, Varl must choose between the only life she's known--her Mamalee, her friends (especially her beloved Dob), the farmland she's explored since childhood--and her growing need for self-determination. Standing in her path, waiting to quash her spirit, is her master, the cunning Peter Perry, a collector of rare things who aims to add Varl herself to his perverse assortment of oddities.

With Slave Moth, Thylias Moss shows herself yet again to be a visionary storyteller (Charles Simic). Written in gorgeous verse, it is an explosion of life in the face of servitude.