My Monticello

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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?

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

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. 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. 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.

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.”

MY MONTICELLO | Kirkus Reviews MY MONTICELLO | Kirkus Reviews

Strand, Karla (2021-10-01). "October 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us - Ms. Magazine". Ms. Magazine . Retrieved 2021-10-16. This is a powerful indictment of present-day America and its racial politics, and Johnson imbues it with passion and fire. All the same, for such a short piece, a long short story or novella, there are places where the pacing falls apart and could do with some editorial tightening. The sort of love triangle feels particularly unsubtle and YA, though it's clear to see where the book wanted to go with it.An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. 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.

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

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. 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. And Monticello, where they stop on their way to the Piedmont Mountains, is the slave plantation of one of the founding fathers of America, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. Da’Naisha is a descendant of Jefferson through his historically documented affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. That Johnson chooses to make her protagonist a descendent of Jefferson reveals the twin legacies of the man in contemporary America: Da’Naisha embodies the desire for freedom, but she is also cursed by the legacy of slavery. 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 suspenseful novella that presents us with a scarily imaginable scenario (given all the alt-right & neo-nazi rallies that have happened in the last couple of years & the Capitol assault) where a group of violent white supremacists engulf Charlottesville. Our narrator, Da'Naisha Love, escapes the violence and finds a momentary refugee in Monticello, which happens to be Thomas Jefferson's historic plantation. Alongside her are strangers, her white boyfriend, her elderly grandmother, and other people from her neighbourhood. Over the course of nineteen days, this cobbled group tries to carry on. Their fear is palpable, and more than once they find themselves faced with possible threats from the outside. Tensions run high and various members within the group inevitably find themselves disagreeing over what to do. But mostly I knew my lineage the way most families know theirs: I knew because Momma told me, because MaViolet told her.” 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. Each story in My Monticello along with the novella take place in the state of Virginia. How is Virginia a character in this book? Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's book is an important work and easily the best thing I have read this year. Each story is completely different in style, yet all solidly land their message. This is her first published book and it certainly holds a great promise for the future. Five stars.