Jesmyn Ward’s previous novels reflect a contemporary setting, and she has explained in interviews that with Annis, she wanted to depart from this trend and create a character who has a strong sense of agency in spite of being enslaved. Agency, or the capacity to make one’s own decisions and to exert control over the events of one’s life, is not typically associated with individuals who lack basic freedoms. Yet although Annis is controlled in many ways by her enslavers, she still retains multiple kinds of agency: emotional agency, spiritual agency, agency of memory, and imaginative agency.

Annis is a character who does not allow her enslavement to stifle her desire for the “sweetness” to be found in life. Her mother, as an enslaved woman, did not have sexual agency, and both of Annis’s enslavers likewise show interest in sexually assaulting her. Born into a world that refuses to grant basic bodily autonomy to enslaved women, Annis still manages to choose her two lovers: Safi and Bastian. She cares deeply for Safi, and their physical relationship is profoundly meaningful and full of “sweetness.” She finds this sweetness again, albeit only briefly, with Bastian, and this union produces a child.