"Her daughter owned her but that didn't mean anything between them."
THE KNOWN WORLD
Edward P. Jones
But a footnote in the mainstream narrative of American slavery, barely spoken of but still intensely researched, is the phenomenon of black slaveholders. It's from this footnote that Jones creates a swirling, non-linear panorama of the people in the fictional Manchester County, Virginia in the years before the Civil War with mixed-race planter and slaveholder Henry Townsend at its center. The spokes of the narrative wheel include Townsend's wife, Caldonia, who inherits her husband's plantation and the slaves on it upon his death. His death is the inciting incident to the narrative, and the little forward motion the narrative engages in follows the plantation's slow burn into chaos and collapse within her soft grip.
We get that story, but we also get the story of Henry's parents and how his father works to buy his freedom and eventually the freedom of his family, one of the most pivotal and quietly heartbreaking scenes the dinner when Henry reveals to his parents the purchase of his first slave, a man he initially counts as friend and only upon the instruction and "guidance" of his former master begins to consider as slave.
As is the tradition in novels about American slavery, and in keeping with the historical record, there is a paucity of happy endings for the characters; indeed, much of the deliverance happens in small, personal interactions wherein slaves manage to keep their humanity amidst the supreme moral confusion that has created their situation. The petty squabbles, the fighting, the caring, the child-rearing, the unexpected conversions and revolutions of character that happen in between days spent in the fields.
The prose isn't spare, so much as it is straightforward, managing, through its straightforward-ness, its own brand of poetry. Scenery is as much a character here, and moments of magical realism slip in to further color the story and the experience of the characters within it.
A harrowing novel that had me chuckling on more than a few occasions, not without its moments of levity. And the non-linear structure was refreshing, the reader sometimes whipsawed between the past and the future within the same paragraph. As much tragedy as undergirds the stories contained therein, those moments were often ones of hope. A glimpse into the future that the character couldn't yet see, hadn't yet realized, the emancipation that the reader knew was coming and in which that reader could rest comfortably, knowing the present sorrow and cruelty would eventually find its end.
The white characters are without nuance, but readily evident here is the effect that slavery has on the slaveholder or the patroller or the member of the ruling caste. It's the principle theme of Faulkner's work, how slavery rendered white Southerners mad with unexpressed guilt and moral confusion (oftentimes, a theme laid out on the page in near-complete erasure of black characters). This novel's novelty is to plumb the depths of that dynamic in the context of slave and slaveholder belonging to the same race. The most bracing strangeness of the tale is how little an oddity it is to the characters within it.
Necessary reading for anyone interested in that particular era of American history.
Edward P. Jones
But a footnote in the mainstream narrative of American slavery, barely spoken of but still intensely researched, is the phenomenon of black slaveholders. It's from this footnote that Jones creates a swirling, non-linear panorama of the people in the fictional Manchester County, Virginia in the years before the Civil War with mixed-race planter and slaveholder Henry Townsend at its center. The spokes of the narrative wheel include Townsend's wife, Caldonia, who inherits her husband's plantation and the slaves on it upon his death. His death is the inciting incident to the narrative, and the little forward motion the narrative engages in follows the plantation's slow burn into chaos and collapse within her soft grip.
We get that story, but we also get the story of Henry's parents and how his father works to buy his freedom and eventually the freedom of his family, one of the most pivotal and quietly heartbreaking scenes the dinner when Henry reveals to his parents the purchase of his first slave, a man he initially counts as friend and only upon the instruction and "guidance" of his former master begins to consider as slave.
As is the tradition in novels about American slavery, and in keeping with the historical record, there is a paucity of happy endings for the characters; indeed, much of the deliverance happens in small, personal interactions wherein slaves manage to keep their humanity amidst the supreme moral confusion that has created their situation. The petty squabbles, the fighting, the caring, the child-rearing, the unexpected conversions and revolutions of character that happen in between days spent in the fields.
The prose isn't spare, so much as it is straightforward, managing, through its straightforward-ness, its own brand of poetry. Scenery is as much a character here, and moments of magical realism slip in to further color the story and the experience of the characters within it.
A harrowing novel that had me chuckling on more than a few occasions, not without its moments of levity. And the non-linear structure was refreshing, the reader sometimes whipsawed between the past and the future within the same paragraph. As much tragedy as undergirds the stories contained therein, those moments were often ones of hope. A glimpse into the future that the character couldn't yet see, hadn't yet realized, the emancipation that the reader knew was coming and in which that reader could rest comfortably, knowing the present sorrow and cruelty would eventually find its end.
The white characters are without nuance, but readily evident here is the effect that slavery has on the slaveholder or the patroller or the member of the ruling caste. It's the principle theme of Faulkner's work, how slavery rendered white Southerners mad with unexpressed guilt and moral confusion (oftentimes, a theme laid out on the page in near-complete erasure of black characters). This novel's novelty is to plumb the depths of that dynamic in the context of slave and slaveholder belonging to the same race. The most bracing strangeness of the tale is how little an oddity it is to the characters within it.
Necessary reading for anyone interested in that particular era of American history.