Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

3m — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:33:40 +0000

Hillary Jordan has written a very good debut novel that speaks on war, racism, marriage, and living off the land. The story is told by various narrators throughout the book. Henry and Laura are a white married couple who move to the Mississippi delta to raise cotton. Henry loves the land, but Laura misses city life and is deeply unhappy. She also has to live and deal with her racist father-in-law for the first time.

Hap and Florence are a black couple living on Henry’s farm as renters. Hap is a preacher, while Florence is a midwife who also helps Laura with some of her housework. Their oldest child Ronsel is in the military and serving in Germany, and when he comes back, he has to adjust back to a way of life that he is no longer accustomed to. He does find a friend, however, in Jamie, Henry’s younger brother. But, this doesn’t sit well with Henry and Jamie’s father, and trouble ensues.

This book all too painfully illustrates how much African-Americans have had to go through in this country. It does seem like the tide has changed with the historic election of our first black President, Barack Obama. I sincerely hope that this event will be the turning point in race relations in the United States.

(All along while reading this book, I was thinking it was going to receive a 4.5 rating, but then at the end something is stated by Jamie that I was deeply offended by, and I changed my rating to a 4. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but I think a better choice of words should have been uilized to avoid offending some readers.)

2008, 328 pp.

The Known World

3m — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:39:34 +0000

The Known World by Edward P. Jones has not only won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the NBCC Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Jones really knows how to write his characters. Each one was very clearly defined. I won’t give away too much of the story here but will write a brief overview.

Henry and Caldonia Townsend are slave owners who are black themselves. Henry’s father had freed himself and his wife, and then later Henry. While Henry was still a slave under William Robbins, he became somewhat of a favorite, and was later instructed by Robbins on how to be a proper slave owner. Henry builds up quite a plantation but then dies unexpectedly. How Caldonia, along with her overseer Moses, runs the plantation afterward forms the rest of the novel.

Several issues are presented in the book. Whites’ attitudes towards blacks, both slave and free; the function of “the law;” men’s attitudes towards women (and vice versa); and the question of how and why blacks could own slaves themselves.

This is a very well-written book, and I struggled on whether to rate it a 4 or 4.5. There is some content in the book that downgrades it slightly for me. Consider it a very high 4.

2003, 388 pp.

Pulitzer Prize, NBCC Award, IMPAC Award

Rating: 4

1morechapter.com » ‘j’ authors

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

The Known World