Thylias Moss

Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse Thylias Moss

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.