My Monticello

Product Information

Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. Guernica: In many ways, the subject matter your stories and characters explore are both the most intractable and the most urgent issues of our time. Given this, where would you say your work — and your characters — land on the spectrum of hope and despair?

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson | Waterstones

The professor fathers a son to serve as his experimental subject and observes him from afar. Sometimes he simply collects data, while at other times he tries to influence his son’s choices, by encouraging him, for instance, to participate in swimming rather than “the fraught cliché of basketball.” His goal is to “ prove [his son] was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” When the young man nears the end of college, the professor convinces himself that his son has “made it out past an invisible trip wire, out to some safe and boundless future.” Predictably, his hope doesn’t come to pass—instead, the young man becomes the victim of police brutality. The apocalyptic scenario you create in the book has clear roots in the American present – there are terrible storms, power failures and racial violence. Was it hard to imagine or unnervingly easy? Library of Virginia Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards". www.lva.virginia.gov . Retrieved 2022-08-22.Short, precise sentences match the urgency of the story, and this economy seems also to inform the dialogue. Brief exchanges are incomplete; the dialogue at times more closely resembles a series of monologues, as each escapee is consumed with worry about the likely outcome of their situation. This was unfortunately another example of a fantastic premise not being fulfilled to the extent that it perhaps could have been (in my opinion). The main character, Da'Naisha is a descend of Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, creating an obvious link between their surroundings and her own personal history. She is also hunkering down amidst all this violence with her current boyfriend, grandmother and her ex, which gives rise to multiple issues during the story. I felt that the author focused too much on the wide cast of supporting characters which left less time than I liked spent with Da'Naisha and developing her character and story. What brave writing--for its willingness to seek the perfect form and the perfect word with which to tell these stories, even if it means telling the story in a non-standard way. Current Winners of the Weatherford Award for Best Books about Appalachia". Loyal Jones Appalachian Center . Retrieved 2022-06-06.

My Monticello - Harvard Review

This fiction collection is an astonishing display of craftsmanship and heart-tugging narratives. Johnson is a brilliant storyteller who gracefully reflects a clear mirror on a troubled America.” More than 80% of our finances come from readers like you. And we’re constantly working to produce a magazine that deserves you—a magazine that is a platform for ideas fostering justice, equality, and civic action. Da’Naisha is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s “darker but not very dark never-wife,” whose six children were all fathered by the man who held her in bondage. The refugees fleeing from violent white supremacists establish a settlement in the home their ancestors were forced to build. The plot is one of the novella’s greatest strengths; through it, Johnson examines climate change and racism, as well as interracial relationships and alliances.This story definitely has its merits and I learned a lot through reading it, but as a piece of entertainment (selfishly my principal goal in reading this one) it didn’t quite knit together for me. After a hectic beginning it's slow to develop and though I was eventually moved by what took place it took a long time for me to reach this level of engagement. Da’Naisha is the character who is designed to draw the reader in and this did work, but dialogue is strangely absent for much of the story and when it is present it consists mainly of one-liners and the odd casual comment. Therefore, I can only award this one three stars, though I predict I might be an outlier in rating this one so modestly.

MY MONTICELLO | Kirkus Reviews MY MONTICELLO | Kirkus Reviews

This collection harmoniously weds the ugly with the beautiful, the terrifying and the brave, the disappointing and the hopeful, and makes for a brilliant debut” The biggest challenge was thinking about the psychological and emotional costs of racism and extremism. It meant putting myself in the same mental space as my characters, being isolated and run out of home. That was hard to contemplate for characters that I grew to really like and care about. The night before the rally, groups of armed men started to turn up Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ...What I liked best is the figurative use of Monticello, the house belonging to Jefferson and where he both kept slaves and impregnated one (or more? my knowledge of US history is shaky) whose descendants are at the heart of the book. The disputed nature of American history, who 'owns' Monticello and who are its descendants are where the interests and weight of this lay for me. And wow - that incendiary ending! A compilation of vivid, complex stories, at times reminiscent of works by Octavia Butler, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead” Guernica: You skirt an edge, particularly in “Control Negro” and “My Monticello,” between the present and a very near future, where what’s come to pass feels both unthinkable and also completely, frighteningly possible. We also see, in “My Monticello,” glimpses of what has occurred, including the Unite the Right rally and the murder of Heather Heyer. Can you talk about these gestures and the connections you make between our current reality and an imagined near future? I found the third story, Something Sweet on Our Tongues, to be a little too emotionally distant and reserved. While I still enjoyed it, the narrative is told in a first-person plural ("we") and this kept pushing me away from getting at the crux of the story or from understanding the main characters with the idea of we in mind. By the time you read this, you may have figured it out. Perhaps your mother told you, though she was only privy to my timeworn thesis—never to my aim or full intention. Still, maybe the truth of it breached your insides:

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson | Goodreads

I remember looking out at all those people, most of whom I'd seen or known over months or years—several of whom I loved. Everybody was yelling or cowering or sneering, angry or afraid.” I admire Ms. Johnson’s creative plots that express herself in these short stories. The Control Negro and My Monticello are particularly clever and impactful. The apocalypse in My Monticello smartly equates to our current race culture in the U.S., and the protagonist’s secret pregnancy somewhat parallels Thomas Jefferson’s quandary of biracial children. How does the author explore the theme of home? Who is permitted to fully claim America as 'home' and what are the costs of exclusion? What are the I also liked “Virginia is Not Your Home”, narrated by January LaVoy. In rapid glimpses, this traces the life of the protagonist who is trying to escape her heritage. “You’ll look hard and wonder how the time passed so swiftly, how your mark on the world remains so shallow.”

Beyond the Book

The book is interested in how people react when the systems of society break down – by drawing together or pulling apart… My Monticello is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it. 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. Gray, Anissa (2021-10-15). "Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's 'My Monticello' explores America's racist past — and present — with grace". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2021-10-16. Stories centered on racism and Virginia, anchored by a dystopian tale set in Thomas Jefferson's home. The title novella that closes Johnson's debut book is stellar and could easily stand on its own...A sharp debut by a writer with wit and confidence.