For centuries, African-Americans have used the oral tradition not merely as a means to communicate, but also as a weapon to resist suppression and discrimination. The paper presents an analysis of the use of orality, or the deliberate suspension of it, as a tool to resist oppression and objectification in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Dessa Rose. It further discusses how black women used orality and silence as a tool for fortification against the aggressions of slavery and for the assertion of their personal, socio- cultural and political identities. The paper concludes with a discussion of how, in the end, orality and literacy work in harmony to effectively represent the particularities of black slave women's experiences and keep the memories of their struggles alive.