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My Monticello: Fiction

par Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

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3491673,491 (4.09)31
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.
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, "My Monticello," tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da'Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson's historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
In "Control Negro," hailed by Roxane Gay as "one hell of story," a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to "painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there." Johnson's characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through "Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse."
United by these characters' relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable collection that bears witness to this country's legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.
"A group of talented narrators deliver these short stories set in Virginia, which focus on the lives of African Americans." ??AudioFile Earphone Award Winner
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
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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. ( )
  ben_r47 | Feb 22, 2024 |
Yeah this one is gonna win stuff for sure. The last story is longer and gives you novel level satisfaction if short stories leave you longing. ( )
  hellokirsti | Jan 3, 2024 |
Great author, powerful content, unrelentingly depressing. Not for every reader ( )
  lrobe190 | Nov 6, 2023 |
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. ( )
1 voter nivramkoorb | Nov 7, 2022 |
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. ( )
  BarbKBooks | Aug 15, 2022 |
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For my parents,
who had me in Virginia
and made it home
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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.
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, "My Monticello," tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da'Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson's historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
In "Control Negro," hailed by Roxane Gay as "one hell of story," a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to "painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there." Johnson's characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through "Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse."
United by these characters' relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable collection that bears witness to this country's legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.
"A group of talented narrators deliver these short stories set in Virginia, which focus on the lives of African Americans." ??AudioFile Earphone Award Winner
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

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