"Diamond has to grow up quickly when, at 8 years old, she is abandoned, along with three siblings, by her mother. As she enters her senior year with Wonder's baby on the way, she struggles to figure out her identity outside of her relationship with this mysterious boy, who makes increasingly reckless decisions. Priscilla, meanwhile, manages five sons, a philandering know-it-all husband, and a bad hip with the help of brown liquor and what she calls her "fulfillments" (read: pills)."
"The characters in Dominion are bombarded with religious scripts about what a proper erotic life should look like. But if we know anything about intimacy and desire, we know that they often hold dominion over us rather than the other way around. Many official and informal directives come from Reverend Sabre Winfrey Jr., Priscilla's husband and Wonder's father. The longtime leader of Seven Seals Missionary Baptist Church, he insists on seeing a malignant sexual deviance everywhere."
Dominion is set in a Mississippi Delta town steeped in Black church culture and intense devotion to high-school football. At the millennium turn, sexuality thrives despite institutional suppression. Diamond, abandoned at eight and pregnant as a senior, and Priscilla, Wonder's mother and the church's 'first lady,' are connected by love for Emanuel 'Wonderboy.' Diamond wrestles with identity outside her relationship as Wonder makes reckless choices. Priscilla manages five sons, a philandering husband, a bad hip, and relies on liquor and pills. Reverend Sabre preaches against sexual 'deviance,' framing desire as a force that holds dominion over people.
Read at The Atlantic
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