Sherley A. Williams' Dessa Rose is a fictional story based on real events. In it, Dessa Rose, a slave convicted through her own confession-"I kill white mens"-of murdering her white master for killing her husband, meets Rufel, a white woman with a sympathy toward the liberation movement (Williams 20). Each woman suffers a bondage of her own. Dessa Rose is literally enslaved, while Rufel is figuratively enslaved in an ad