My Monticello
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
“A badass debut by any measure—nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle "...'My Monticello' is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it." — The Washington Post Winner of the Weatherford Award in Fiction A winner of 2022 Lillian Smith Book Awards 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 book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.
Reviews with the most likes.
I've had a couple of instances this year where I read literary fiction despite knowing I don't like the genre, probably because I thought this could be the one. This collection was as usual not something I had heard of at all. I had just finished reading the book How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith which me rethink a lot about plantations in general and the history of Monticello in particular. So when I saw this title while browsing netgalley, it immediately drew my attention and I wanted to give it a try.
The writing in this collection is wonderful and very effective at tugging our heartstrings or shocking us with the ideas explored. I can't say I understood them all but they were all definitely unique. It was not at all surprising that race and racism forms a major thread through all the stories but what leaves a deeper impression is the strength of family - blood or found. I also listened to the audiobook in parts and I loved the idea of each story having its own narrator, with each bringing their own style to the storytelling. It definitely enhanced the experience.
So if you are a fan of literary fiction or short story collections, you should check this out. And if you only wanna read one story, it has to be the titular one because it's quite unforgettable.
Below are my individual reviews...
Control Negro
CW: racist micro aggressions, assault, police brutality
I am frankly surprised at the premise of this story. It's both horrifying in its idea but also a bit sad because it ultimately tries to answer the ONE question - what is it exactly that Black people have to do to be respected for their humanity and their achievements without devolving into racist diatribe or in the extreme, getting killed by cops for no fault of theirs.
Virginia is Not Your Home
Not my kind of story. It's too realistic and hard hitting to read stories of women stuck in their lives as housewives and feeling like they haven't achieved anything and don't belong anywhere, and I just don't have the appetite for them anymore.
Something Sweet on our Tongues
CW: assault
I had a hard time understanding where this story was going and especially that ending was kinda horrible.
Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse
This felt very prescient with all the preparations the narrator makes seeming very realistic. I especially was hurt by the despair that she was feeling having been unable to do enough for her daughter to be able to own a home.
The King of Xandria
CW: mention of child soldiers
This was heartbreaking. An immigrant father trying to piece his life together after his wife's brutal death and ensuring his children are able to make a better life for themselves in the new country. But he also feels helpless because he can't be the same sole breadwinner of his home in America and even more unmoored when he realizes that his children are growing up, able to make their own decisions and don't always need him. It's a tough situation for a father already dealing with grief and the author captures his anguish very well.
My Monticello
CW: racial violence
This eponymous story is basically a novella which covers almost 80% of this collection in page count, and I have to agree that it's the most impactful. Tracing the story of a young Black woman descendant of Sally Hemmings during a near future America ravaged by effects of climate change, we see how the lack of resources has led to more racial violence, with white people terrorizing and killing Black people. In this backdrop, Naisha is a brave young lady who manages to drive away from her town with a group of neighbors, escaping the violence, taking refuge in the Monticello plantation. It brings up lot of questions in her about her identity and history and her relationship to the place, particularly at a time when her people are being hunted again. But ultimately this is a story of her and the rest of the group coming together despite their differences to struggle and survive and help each other during the direst circumstances. They never lose heart and are ready to fight back for the little home they have been able to carve on the hill in Monticello. Very well written and evocative story which leaves us thinking, and maybe even a bit scared.
The opening story, “Control Negro,” is dynamite and deserving of its appearance in Best American Short Stories. The other stories were also very good, and told from different points of view, which provided for a nice variety. The title piece, a novella, is poignant for anyone who lives near Charlottesville VA, as I do. The horrors of the Unite the Right rally that brought tragedy to the city could easily return and it's not hard to imagine this work of fiction begin prophetic.
