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My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

 

Published: 2021, Penguin Random House

Genre: Fiction

Themes: White Supremacy riots, Thomas Jefferson, Monticello

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤



Ah, Thomas Jefferson.  Spokesman for democracy, American Founding Father, principle author of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States.  All-round good bloke right?

Well, maybe not quite so all-round as he had a bit of a blind spot when it came to owning people.  Mr Jefferson owned more than six hundred African American people during his adult life and they were all put to work in and around his magnificent house, Monticello.  If you look up Thomas Jefferson's page on the White House website there is no mention of these people at all, and quite near the top of the text there is a quote from one of Jefferson's private letters where he states: 'I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.' 

No wonder Jocelyn Nicole Johnson wanted to use this darker side of history as subject matter for her writing.  This book is part of a small collection that includes five short stories and the novella Monticello.  It has been so well received that Netflix have already snapped it up for a film and this debut novel has allowed Ms Johnson to leave her teaching job and, at the age of fifty, become a full time writer.

Although the book draws heavily on the past, it is actually set in the not too distant future at a time when the area around Charlottesville has been immobilised by storms, and white supremacist rioters have taken advantage of the chaos and begun driving people from their homes.  Da'Naisha is a young woman who is forced to flee for her life using an abandoned bus, along with her her sick grandmother and a random selection of neighbours.  They escape up the mountain to Monticello, which is now a museum, and for the next nineteen days they survive on supplies from the gift shop and surrounding gardens while they decide what to do next.

In the story, Da'Naisha and her grandmother are direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson, although they carry no visible trace of his white skin.  It is historically correct that Jefferson fathered at least six children with a slave woman called Sarah Hemmings, and as four of them lived into adulthood, many of his descendants are currently living in black communities.  

The rioting depicted in the book is based on real events in Charlottesville in 2017, when white supremacists held a far-right rally in the Virginia city, and one of their number drove his car into anti-racist protestors killing Heather Heyer.

This book reminds us that just because people have been freed from slavery, it does not mean they are free from hate.  Even now, even today.
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