My Monticello

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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.” 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. 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? Johnson: I think how we do anything is how we do everything. The way America does racism is very connected to the way America does capitalism and colonialism, and is connected to what we value and the stories that we tell ourselves. In America, it’s often about every person for themselves and the valorization of a certain kind of freedom — where your freedom can entirely infringe on someone else’s and even destroy them without penalty, particularly if you look and sound a certain way. I think that racism and the climate crisis are connected in that way. I also think that one exacerbates the other: environmental issues exacerbate racism, or are filtered through the lens of racism, in obvious ways like where a refinery is placed or where pollution ends up or, when there’s a storm, which neighborhoods have protection or where investment goes. 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.

My Monticello: 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 | TIME My Monticello: 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 | TIME

I was a public school teacher for 20 years and I’m a huge proponent of community. I’ve had classes where all kinds of people who might not otherwise have a lot in common create some sort of relationship and unity. I definitely tried to highlight that in the book. I really used the ideas of teaching to shape how my protagonist, Da’Naisha Love, tries to get her group of neighbours to work together in this very tense situation. She has them do what a teacher would do on the first day of school – they commit to a list of things they all do together, to get by. Virginia is Not Your Home, the second story, was also a showcase. Not quite as compelling as the first, but that was more in line with the nature of the story itself. The style here is sort of an unfurling of a tale . . . the second-person narration is clipped and feels well up above the story, but once I was able to settle into the rhythm, the delivery was smooth with a wonderful, understated ache. In 2017, a white supremacist drove his car headlong into a peaceful group opposing a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a young woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring dozens of others. There was widespread horror and outrage as footage of broken bodies bouncing off the car was broadcast around the world. But what if the tragedy did not shame local white nationalists, but embolden them? Such is the premise of Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s riveting debut novel, which is set in the near future with the deadly assault in Charlottesville still in living memory. Let me emphasize that I am painfully aware of the cultural problems in the US. However, I cannot rate this book and its stories highly. I just did not appreciate the writing style which in the first two stories were written in a kind of letter format. Especially in the second story, it seemed like scolding. Having given you my opinion, I DO want you to know that the likes of Roxanne Gay, Colson Whitehead and Charles Yu have praised this book to the skies. So don't listen to me; see for yourself.

Book Summary

Announcing the Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards". National Book Critics Circle. 2022-01-21 . Retrieved 2022-06-06. 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. Egelman, Sarah Rachel (October 5, 2021). "My Monticello: Fiction". Book Reporter . Retrieved 2021-10-16.

My Monticello: Fiction: Johnson, Jocelyn Nicole My Monticello: Fiction: Johnson, Jocelyn Nicole

I rarely read the blurb for a book, so at first was confused. I thought it was a historical fiction novel. WRONG. It is 5 short stories and a novella and the time period is NOW. NOW with all the racial problems we are beginning to recognize as endemic in the US. But mostly I knew my lineage the way most families know theirs: I knew because Momma told me, because MaViolet told her.” I also based the neighborhood in the novella on First Street, which is right near my home. It’s very diverse and includes a cluster of public housing. In the story the characters are mostly fleeing from public housing. There are people from all over, who immigrated to the United States from all over the world. There are people of all colors, people of all ages, people of all ways of being in that space. I wanted the neighborhood in the book to have that quality as well, as I believe in the possibility of placing a lot of different people together and then finding some commonality. 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?

Media Reviews

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. Fitzgerald, Isaac (September 28, 2021). "It's Never Too Late to Publish a Debut Book and Score a Netflix Deal". The New York Times . Retrieved October 30, 2021. Current Winners of the Weatherford Award for Best Books about Appalachia". Loyal Jones Appalachian Center . Retrieved 2022-06-06. Library of Virginia Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards". www.lva.virginia.gov . Retrieved 2022-08-22.

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Note: I read a copy of this novella alone, though it will be issued as apart of a collection of the author's stories under the same title. Johnson: I’ve been a public school art teacher for many years, so that is my bread and butter: a bunch of people who are different and don’t really want to be in the same room, but are. They live in the same neighborhoods and are forced to create a community. Teachers are tasked with creating the conditions for that community to happen, and the very best teachers do it really, really well. I believe in those public spaces and the opportunities they present; they might be the only time you come together with a bunch of people you don’t necessarily want to be with. So I played with that: Da’Naisha is studying to be a teacher, and I used a lot of the things teachers do to create community. Her way of bringing the group together is this kind of hasty constitution, which is a very first-week thing to do as a public school teacher, generating a list of intentions and what our community is going to do together. Da'Naisha also happens to be a descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and her ancestry makes her view Monticello through a very specific lens. Throughout the course of the novella, Da'Naisha also reflects on racism in America, slavery, white supremacy, and interracial relationship. Also, that this group has found refuge from white supremacists in a former plantation adds further complexity to their circumstances. The last story, which is the titular tale, My Monticello, takes up a good chunk of the collection, more than double the length of the other five combined. I really wanted to like this one more — maybe the most — but the distance at which the narrator is placed from the reader was too far to reach. A reluctant storyteller is just someone I don't want to chase. I liked the plot and found it really intriguing, but the engagement of the story in itself was something for which I could not compensate on my own. My Monticello seemed to have the most story to tell and was still the most disinterested of the lot. 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.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. Guernica: Can you talk more about Da’Naisha Love? How and why is it that she’s the one to lead this group in this moment, and to this place, Monticello?

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson | Goodreads My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson | Goodreads

Stories centered on racism and Virginia, anchored by a dystopian tale set in Thomas Jefferson’s home. Strand, Karla (2021-10-01). "October 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us - Ms. Magazine". Ms. Magazine . Retrieved 2021-10-16. Lillian Smith Book Awards Recognize Short Story Collection, Nonfiction Book for Furthering Social Justice | UGA Libraries". www.libs.uga.edu . Retrieved 2022-06-06. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Guernica: One of the fascinating things about your work is how you tie in our history and legacy of slavery with the gradual destruction of the earth. Can you talk about this a little bit? My Monticello is a 2021 book written by debut author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, published October 5, 2021 by Henry Holt and Co. The books consists of five short stories and a novella. [1] Contents [ edit ] The title novella in My Monticello, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s debut collection of short fiction, is set in a dystopian future that mirrors the crises of our own day. Following a summer of wildfires, extreme heatwaves, and “a national election girded by massive demonstrations,” narrator Da’Naisha Hemings Love explains, the East Coast is hit with “great and terrible storms” that disrupt transportation, take down the power grid, and cause mobile phones to go “glitchy and dark in our palms.” As she says, “It was unclear if we were under siege, or whether the world was toppling under its own needless weight.” The book is interested in how people react when the systems of society break down – by drawing together or pulling apart… It is ultimately this love, if anything, that can sustain the group in the isolation of the mountain, as they are hunted down by the white supremacist militia – and by the legacy of racism which accompanied the stirring idealism of Jefferson.