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Chargement... My Monticello: Fictionpar Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Corralled by white supremacists, a group of Charlottesville residents take refuge at Monticello where the ghosts of the past meet the ghosts of the present. ( ) Not sure how I found this book but I am glad that I did. This is a debut collection by Johnson who is a Virginia public school art teach and is 50. The book consists of 5 short stories and the book title novella. The short stories take place in present day Virginia and deal with various aspects of the black experience. They are well written and very creative. Johnson has a way of making you feel the characters anguish and joy. What sets this collection off and into the outstanding category in the novella "My Monticello". Starting with the Charlottesville 2017 protests that turned violent, it presents a world in which climate change and civil unrest are creating an "unraveling" of society with utility grids and cell phone no longer being supported. In this story the city is being attacked by white militias that are seeking to drive out the black/brown people from city and take it back for themselves. The lead character Da'Naisha Love is a 19 year old student at UVA and a direct descendent of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson. She and 18 others flee the city when they are attacked and end up at Jefferson's plantation at Monticello. They spend the next 19 days taking it over and working together to make a community and deal with the violence around them. There are so many stories going on and they are beautifully done. You feel the scariness of their situation and you see the ties to the past and the uncertain future. Given our current state of polarization and climate change issues, the picture Johnson draws could become a reality. The threads that hold society together may not be as strong as we would like to believe. At 210 pages this is a book that should be read. I look forward to future books by Johnson. I didn’t understand this book structurally when I first began reading. The “My Monticello” part is a novella that follows 4 short stories. Not knowing this in advance made the beginning of the audiobook confusing. This would probably not have been a problem at all for print readers, and I got through it quickly. The first of the stories is arguably the most brilliant part of the book. In “Control Negro”, narrated by Levar Burton in the audio version, an aging African American man recounts what happens when he plans to plot out the life of a black youth in a way that makes his position in the world a perfect parallel for a young white man in the same circumstances. If he controls all variables, will this young black man have the same life arc as his white counterpart? The other stories are very good, but all the other parts of the book pale in comparison with the My Monticello section. I can’t avoid the disclaimer: Yet another book set where I live. In central Virginia, although this time a hour west of Richmond, in and around Charlottesville. Most specifically, on the mountain that is topped by the estate created by Thomas’s Jefferson, Monticello. Additional disclosure: I have visited Monticello multiple times, most recently just 6 months ago. Author Johnson’s imagination takes off from the day in 2017 when a young woman was killed by a white supremacist who intentionally drove his car into a group of protestors in Charlottesville. She layers on top of that electrical outages resulting from violent storms triggered by climate change. And in the midst of this chaos, the white supremacists take to the streets, terrorizing persons of color and others without economic means. A group of these persons escapes from the horrific conditions of the neighborhood, eventually settling at Monticello. This story was beautifully written. I felt very much connected with the main character, a young African American woman, as well as her two boyfriends, one black, one white. And her grandmother and various people from her neighborhood. And the pacing (always so important to me) was excellent, moving forward toward a likely, but nevertheless uncertain, outcome. High marks for conceptualization and execution, although the format seemed a bit contrived. I anticipate good things to come from Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Prix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Literature.
Short Stories.
HTML: In a daring and fierce debut work of fiction??the likes of which comes along once in a generation??Virginia's landscapes, emblems, and Thomas Jefferson's historic plantation set the stage for a cast of unforgettable characters fighting for their right to exist in America. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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