Mace Williams in Take My Hand: Character Analysis

Overview of Mace Williams in Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez — Character Analysis — Mace Williams is the father of Erica and India, the two sisters whose coerced sterilizations drive the plot of Take My Hand. A sharecropper living with his mother and daughters in a one-room shanty on Old Selma Road, Mace enters the story already shaped by loss: his wife Constance died, and afterward, as he tells Civil, “nothing went right.” His signature—an X—on a clinic consent form becomes the hinge of the novel’s tragedy. Over the course of the narrative, Mace moves from illiterate farm laborer to public witness before a Senate subcommittee, learns to read with Civil’s help, and enters a romantic relationship with her. His arc is one of quiet dignity, shame, and hard-won self-possession. For a full overview of the novel, see the book home page.