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The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream, Mathis’s first novel heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream, Mathis’s first novel heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
243 pages, Hardcover
First published December 6, 2012
About the author
Ayana Mathis
8 books612 followersAyana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,536 reviews
January 2, 2013
Rating = 3.5 stars
Aw, hell. How am I supposed to rate this? There's some powerful writing here, but the structure of the novel prevents it from gaining much momentum. Each chapter is devoted to one or two of Hattie's children, and after they get that one chapter, they're mostly abandoned for the remainder of the novel. Each character has to be introduced and developed within the space of one long chapter, never to be heard from again (mostly) once their time in the spotlight has passed.
Adding to the discontinuity are the long time gaps between chapters. You get "Philadelphia and Jubilee" in 1925, followed by "Floyd" in 1948, then "Six" in 1950, and so on. Instead of a novel, it begins to feel like a series of interconnected stories, with one or two characters binding them all together. Hattie is the only character we can connect with throughout the entire book, and often that connection is from a distance.
Does this mean I didn't enjoy the book? No. Ayana Mathis is a mighty fine writer. She seems to write from a place of understanding the hearts and minds of a people whose history offered them limited options, often resulting in self-destructive behaviors.
In 1923, Hattie moves to Philadelphia as part of the Great Migration, when many Southern black people moved north hoping to escape abuse and poverty. The absence of Jim Crow laws allows her greater dignity and freedom from fear, but financial success eludes her. Her husband is a hard-drinking, gambling, womanizing scoundrel, but she can't resist him in the bedroom. So baby after baby after baby arrives. Hattie is so busy just trying to keep them fed and clothed and out of trouble that she doesn't think to give them the warmth and affection they crave. Each chapter shows how that life of poverty and apparent hopelessness infects each child with a certain poverty of spirit.
What Ayana Mathis does masterfully is show how removal from oppression does not automatically lift the feeling of being oppressed. At the end of the novel, Hattie observes:
"Here we are, sixty years out of Georgia, a new generation has been born, and there's still the same wounding and the same pain."
Healing takes more than a generation, and the work is still upon us.
This has no bearing on the story, but I found it interesting and effective the way Mathis uses references to food to illustrate the various skin tones. She describes people with skin the color of liquid caramel, clover honey, milky tea, nutmeg, and cinnamon. And Hattie, who could have "passed," has skin "the color of the inside of an almond." I'm so pale that I practically glow in the dark, but when I look at my skin, it's not really white. The closest I could get, using a food reference, would be the inside of a Yukon Gold potato. Appetizing, ain't it?
Aw, hell. How am I supposed to rate this? There's some powerful writing here, but the structure of the novel prevents it from gaining much momentum. Each chapter is devoted to one or two of Hattie's children, and after they get that one chapter, they're mostly abandoned for the remainder of the novel. Each character has to be introduced and developed within the space of one long chapter, never to be heard from again (mostly) once their time in the spotlight has passed.
Adding to the discontinuity are the long time gaps between chapters. You get "Philadelphia and Jubilee" in 1925, followed by "Floyd" in 1948, then "Six" in 1950, and so on. Instead of a novel, it begins to feel like a series of interconnected stories, with one or two characters binding them all together. Hattie is the only character we can connect with throughout the entire book, and often that connection is from a distance.
Does this mean I didn't enjoy the book? No. Ayana Mathis is a mighty fine writer. She seems to write from a place of understanding the hearts and minds of a people whose history offered them limited options, often resulting in self-destructive behaviors.
In 1923, Hattie moves to Philadelphia as part of the Great Migration, when many Southern black people moved north hoping to escape abuse and poverty. The absence of Jim Crow laws allows her greater dignity and freedom from fear, but financial success eludes her. Her husband is a hard-drinking, gambling, womanizing scoundrel, but she can't resist him in the bedroom. So baby after baby after baby arrives. Hattie is so busy just trying to keep them fed and clothed and out of trouble that she doesn't think to give them the warmth and affection they crave. Each chapter shows how that life of poverty and apparent hopelessness infects each child with a certain poverty of spirit.
What Ayana Mathis does masterfully is show how removal from oppression does not automatically lift the feeling of being oppressed. At the end of the novel, Hattie observes:
"Here we are, sixty years out of Georgia, a new generation has been born, and there's still the same wounding and the same pain."
Healing takes more than a generation, and the work is still upon us.
This has no bearing on the story, but I found it interesting and effective the way Mathis uses references to food to illustrate the various skin tones. She describes people with skin the color of liquid caramel, clover honey, milky tea, nutmeg, and cinnamon. And Hattie, who could have "passed," has skin "the color of the inside of an almond." I'm so pale that I practically glow in the dark, but when I look at my skin, it's not really white. The closest I could get, using a food reference, would be the inside of a Yukon Gold potato. Appetizing, ain't it?
January 19, 2013
After sticking with this book for five chapters, I am giving up. I don't typically enjoy Oprah's recommendations but this one has been so well-reviewed. The writing is good but it reads like a series of short stories about each of Hattie's children. I would rather have more of a plot. None of the characters were relatable or likable to me, especially Hattie. I have no tolerance for a cold, distant mother.
I concur with The Chicago Tribune's review:
"Our great novelists give us fully rounded characters whose lives reflect the limitations, the possibilities and the wonder of the times in which they live. Mathis gives us a one-dimensional portrait of their suffering--and little else."
I concur with The Chicago Tribune's review:
"Our great novelists give us fully rounded characters whose lives reflect the limitations, the possibilities and the wonder of the times in which they live. Mathis gives us a one-dimensional portrait of their suffering--and little else."
December 12, 2014
This is a beautiful and heartbreaking book. It is a novel, but it is told as a collection of stories, all taken from the complex, broken, and vivid lives of one woman and her family over 4 generations. Some have said it is a story of The Great Migration, when Southern Blacks moved out of the South starting around 1915, and it is true that many of the hardships and struggles are representative of families migrating at that time. But at its core this book is the story of one family, and that family's unique struggles, both internal and external. The stories are told with a poetic voice, and although the jumps through time and context are sometimes jarring, the careful words and vivid imagery keep the narrative grounded. The stories are replete with drama, but they contain such truth that by the end of the book I was responding as if they were my family, with all of the love, anger, and remorse that that implies. To me, that is the author's greatest accomplishment here, that she made these stories so real and so vivid, that they became my own.
It was a tough sell for me at first, because this book exposes all the pains of the heart. It is a sad book, at times unbearably sad, and if you are looking for vindication or tidy happy endings then it is best that you look elsewhere, you won't find them here. But sadness and hardship are great teachers, and as Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." That was true for me about this book, and although the author does not show us many happy moments within these pages, there is an understanding that we can only be this sad for people that we care about, and for relationships that we cherish, and because of the promise of joy, maybe right around the corner, or maybe here all along and we failed to notice it.
I could continue waxing poetic about this book, but that would mean spoilers, and rambling, and it would keep you from going out and getting a copy and reading it immediately. I will end with a thought from Hattie, who in the book shares her favorite Bible quote, from the Book of Job: "Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward." When she is told that this is too depressing a thought, she replies that it makes her feel like she is not alone. And that, too, is the achievement of this book. By recognizing our shared hardships, the kindred sadness and grief in our lives, we can also recognize the shared spark that keeps us going, can see the possibility of continuing on in the face of impossible odds, can see the beauty in just moving one foot in front of the other.
It was a tough sell for me at first, because this book exposes all the pains of the heart. It is a sad book, at times unbearably sad, and if you are looking for vindication or tidy happy endings then it is best that you look elsewhere, you won't find them here. But sadness and hardship are great teachers, and as Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." That was true for me about this book, and although the author does not show us many happy moments within these pages, there is an understanding that we can only be this sad for people that we care about, and for relationships that we cherish, and because of the promise of joy, maybe right around the corner, or maybe here all along and we failed to notice it.
I could continue waxing poetic about this book, but that would mean spoilers, and rambling, and it would keep you from going out and getting a copy and reading it immediately. I will end with a thought from Hattie, who in the book shares her favorite Bible quote, from the Book of Job: "Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward." When she is told that this is too depressing a thought, she replies that it makes her feel like she is not alone. And that, too, is the achievement of this book. By recognizing our shared hardships, the kindred sadness and grief in our lives, we can also recognize the shared spark that keeps us going, can see the possibility of continuing on in the face of impossible odds, can see the beauty in just moving one foot in front of the other.
June 6, 2022
i have no idea how to rate this book. it's beautiful in so many ways, but it's not a book one likes. so terribly painful. maybe i'll write a review. i have to recover first.
REVIEW 3/23/13
there is only one way i can make myself like (not appreciate, not admire, not respect, because those i already do: like) this book, and it is if i imagine it representing the author's childhood. in the acknowledgments she writes: "To the Philadelphia School for Girls, for being a light in the darkest part of my life..."
that would be her childhood.
now, if i'm an author who wrote a book about the terrible suffering the befalls each of the nine children of a cold and distant mother and a drinking, absent father, and i went to great pains precisely to show how terribly fucked up each child of this couple is; and if in the acknowledgments i refer to my childhood as "the darkest past of my life:" well, it seems to me i'm inviting the reader to gather that i had a distant, emotionally disconnected mother and an absent father, and that this caused me unimaginable pain.
this goes hand in hand with the very forgiving portrayal of both mother and father, who, in spite of their glaring shortcomings, are devoted to their children and love them, albeit in terribly flawed and entirely inaccessible ways.
also, mother's and father's personal anguish is contextualized. they leave jim crow georgia and come to the north (as it happens, philadelphia) full of hope and optimism. hattie, 16, is pregnant and soon gives birth to twins she clearly adores. hattie and augustus (17) live in a rented home but have great hopes soon to buy a house. that the twins are a seal of this promise is imprinted in their names: philadelphia and jubilee. at 7 months the twins catch pneumonia and die. maybe they die because it is 1925 and in 1925 babies died of pneumonia. maybe they die because they would have died in 2013 too. maybe they die because hattie prefers old wives' remedies to the medicines recommended by the doctor. who knows.
philadelphia is cold. philadelphia is humid. philadelphia is not georgia.
this death marks the end of everything: of augustus's ability to stand on his own two feet and keep on walking, or hattie's capacity to be emotionally available to her children, of a future, of middle-class living. the rest of hattie's children's life is spent in hunger, abject poverty, emotional starvation, and the distress of living with parents who are so embittered with each other, they can't even be in the same room (except, clearly, to have sex and make babies).
each child is marked by his or her own brand of misery. one is schizophrenic.
the background is a background of dislocation. in the south maybe hattie and augustus would have been happy. the north is cold and unforgiving. the north is lonely. yet the south is intolerable, unlivable. and the children, in their own ways, all die.
i can make myself like this book only if i think that ayana mathis described her childhood. otherwise i'll just have to settle for admiring it and hope that whatever demon haunted this young writer was exorcised in the writing of this book, and the next book will have the same expertise and artistry and none of the deadly bleakness. because this deadly bleakness (broken only, and with much welcome, by a tiny rain of sun right at the end) gives me nothing.
REVIEW 3/23/13
there is only one way i can make myself like (not appreciate, not admire, not respect, because those i already do: like) this book, and it is if i imagine it representing the author's childhood. in the acknowledgments she writes: "To the Philadelphia School for Girls, for being a light in the darkest part of my life..."
that would be her childhood.
now, if i'm an author who wrote a book about the terrible suffering the befalls each of the nine children of a cold and distant mother and a drinking, absent father, and i went to great pains precisely to show how terribly fucked up each child of this couple is; and if in the acknowledgments i refer to my childhood as "the darkest past of my life:" well, it seems to me i'm inviting the reader to gather that i had a distant, emotionally disconnected mother and an absent father, and that this caused me unimaginable pain.
this goes hand in hand with the very forgiving portrayal of both mother and father, who, in spite of their glaring shortcomings, are devoted to their children and love them, albeit in terribly flawed and entirely inaccessible ways.
also, mother's and father's personal anguish is contextualized. they leave jim crow georgia and come to the north (as it happens, philadelphia) full of hope and optimism. hattie, 16, is pregnant and soon gives birth to twins she clearly adores. hattie and augustus (17) live in a rented home but have great hopes soon to buy a house. that the twins are a seal of this promise is imprinted in their names: philadelphia and jubilee. at 7 months the twins catch pneumonia and die. maybe they die because it is 1925 and in 1925 babies died of pneumonia. maybe they die because they would have died in 2013 too. maybe they die because hattie prefers old wives' remedies to the medicines recommended by the doctor. who knows.
philadelphia is cold. philadelphia is humid. philadelphia is not georgia.
this death marks the end of everything: of augustus's ability to stand on his own two feet and keep on walking, or hattie's capacity to be emotionally available to her children, of a future, of middle-class living. the rest of hattie's children's life is spent in hunger, abject poverty, emotional starvation, and the distress of living with parents who are so embittered with each other, they can't even be in the same room (except, clearly, to have sex and make babies).
each child is marked by his or her own brand of misery. one is schizophrenic.
the background is a background of dislocation. in the south maybe hattie and augustus would have been happy. the north is cold and unforgiving. the north is lonely. yet the south is intolerable, unlivable. and the children, in their own ways, all die.
i can make myself like this book only if i think that ayana mathis described her childhood. otherwise i'll just have to settle for admiring it and hope that whatever demon haunted this young writer was exorcised in the writing of this book, and the next book will have the same expertise and artistry and none of the deadly bleakness. because this deadly bleakness (broken only, and with much welcome, by a tiny rain of sun right at the end) gives me nothing.
December 24, 2012
I heard an interview with Oprah and Ayana Mathis and was intrigued. Although I've given this book 4 stars, I would have liked to see more connectivity between the characters. The book read more like a collection of separate short stories rather than a novel. Each of the characters are sadly flawed, with troubled lives, different yet similar to their mother's. I loved the picture the author painted of each of them.
Some of Oprah's comments were insightful, but many were along the lines of "oh, I loved that paragraph." So what? Why is her name part of the title? Ayana Mathis's talent as a writer stands on her own merit.
Some of Oprah's comments were insightful, but many were along the lines of "oh, I loved that paragraph." So what? Why is her name part of the title? Ayana Mathis's talent as a writer stands on her own merit.
January 7, 2013
Going to read this despite the fact that's it's Oprah.............. (The Great Migration fascinates me)
Well that was depressing :-( Not a single character to care about and this was NOT the Great Migration that I know about. Not reccommended.
Well that was depressing :-( Not a single character to care about and this was NOT the Great Migration that I know about. Not reccommended.
November 10, 2020
PAURA E RABBIA
Anni '30.
In fuga dal soffocante razzismo della Georgia la quindicenne Hattie, assieme alla madre e alla sorella, si dirige a nord in cerca di fortuna.
Hattie tenta di allentare la presa di quel lungo guinzaglio che dal profondo sud cerca ancora di strattonarla.
Crede di riuscirci sposandosi con August per il quale non proverà, invece, nient'altro che risentimento.
Hattie è un'afroamericana dalla pelle chiara.
Negli anni '30 era molto diffuso il fenomeno del Passing (segnalo a questo proposito l'interessante e poco noto romanzo di Nella Larsen "Passing”): per sfuggire ad una vita segnata dalla segregazione ci si mimetizzava nascondendo le proprie origini attuando così una sorta di passaggio di razza clandestino.
Ma Hattie non fa questa scelta.
Rimane nella sua comunità e come altri nati e cresciuti con un costante senso di paura macina dentro sé una grande rabbia.
Con rabbia vivrà la sua vita e crescerà i suoi figli.
Non capivano che tutto l'amore che aveva dentro era servito a sfamarli, vestirli e prepararli ad affrontare il mondo. E il mondo non li avrebbe amati: il mondo non sarebbe stato buono.
Dodici capitoli. Undici figli ed una nipote.
In quest'ottica di visione epica possiamo trovare analogie tematiche con la produzione di Toni Morrison. Sebbene il romanzo sia scorrevole e ben scritto non si può però fare altrettanti paragoni con la Morrison che, con la sua scrittura magistrale, si colloca ad un livello molto più alto.
Anni '30.
In fuga dal soffocante razzismo della Georgia la quindicenne Hattie, assieme alla madre e alla sorella, si dirige a nord in cerca di fortuna.
Hattie tenta di allentare la presa di quel lungo guinzaglio che dal profondo sud cerca ancora di strattonarla.
Crede di riuscirci sposandosi con August per il quale non proverà, invece, nient'altro che risentimento.
Hattie è un'afroamericana dalla pelle chiara.
Negli anni '30 era molto diffuso il fenomeno del Passing (segnalo a questo proposito l'interessante e poco noto romanzo di Nella Larsen "Passing”): per sfuggire ad una vita segnata dalla segregazione ci si mimetizzava nascondendo le proprie origini attuando così una sorta di passaggio di razza clandestino.
Ma Hattie non fa questa scelta.
Rimane nella sua comunità e come altri nati e cresciuti con un costante senso di paura macina dentro sé una grande rabbia.
Con rabbia vivrà la sua vita e crescerà i suoi figli.
Non capivano che tutto l'amore che aveva dentro era servito a sfamarli, vestirli e prepararli ad affrontare il mondo. E il mondo non li avrebbe amati: il mondo non sarebbe stato buono.
Dodici capitoli. Undici figli ed una nipote.
In quest'ottica di visione epica possiamo trovare analogie tematiche con la produzione di Toni Morrison. Sebbene il romanzo sia scorrevole e ben scritto non si può però fare altrettanti paragoni con la Morrison che, con la sua scrittura magistrale, si colloca ad un livello molto più alto.
March 15, 2013
I read this late last year and at first I was gravitating towards leaving it unrated. I thought I wouldn't be able to give it a rating that would adequately express how I felt about what I had read. Sure, I liked the writing in some parts and I enjoyed some chapters more than others but overall I couldn't say whether I liked or didn't like it hence my dilemma. The author set up the book with each chapter being from the point of view of Hattie's children and while some worked, some fell really flat. My final decision resulted in two stars (2.5 really) and I think that adequately represents how I feel about it based on GR's system. I was so exhausted when I was done and it actually took me awhile to pick up another book.
March 14, 2013
This was a book that initially I didn't think I would appreciate, as much hype as it was getting, especially being chosen as an Oprah book club pick.
I devoured The Twelve Tribes of Hattie in 2 sittings, and I can't remember the last time I read a book that I was as interested in. This book tells 12 different stories, all from the perspectives of Hattie's twelve children. Each story had its own heartbeat and was perfectly shaped into a beginning, middle, and end. Each story while told chronologically was not in the birth order of the children and made for an interesting dynamic that I was not expecting. Mathis does a brilliant job of seemlessly tying these stories together to tell the main story, which is Hattie's, through the eyes of her children. Most of the characters have major flaws and some of the stories rip your heart out and allow you to be grateful for the many intangibles that you have in your life.
Highly reccommend this one.
I devoured The Twelve Tribes of Hattie in 2 sittings, and I can't remember the last time I read a book that I was as interested in. This book tells 12 different stories, all from the perspectives of Hattie's twelve children. Each story had its own heartbeat and was perfectly shaped into a beginning, middle, and end. Each story while told chronologically was not in the birth order of the children and made for an interesting dynamic that I was not expecting. Mathis does a brilliant job of seemlessly tying these stories together to tell the main story, which is Hattie's, through the eyes of her children. Most of the characters have major flaws and some of the stories rip your heart out and allow you to be grateful for the many intangibles that you have in your life.
Highly reccommend this one.
April 18, 2013
Allegorical novel about slavery and race. Uses biblical references (twelve tribes of Israel) in the same vein as Toni Morrison.
Bleak.
But, then Oprah loves her some cheerless storytelling.
Bleak.
But, then Oprah loves her some cheerless storytelling.
December 6, 2012
Is there a limit on the amount of love a parent can have for their child? If you have more than one child, is it possible to have loved your other children so much that you have nothing left for the others? Or is it just possible for life to beat you down so much so that you have nothing left to give your children except a place to stay, food to eat and a determination to survive?
I can't find fault with Hattie Shepherd. Giving birth to your first children at the age of 19 in a new city can be overwhelming. To find yourself giving birth years later at the age of 46 is surprising. Then to turn around at 74 and find yourself mothering your grandchildren, is not an easy road. But how do you explain that to your children who only see you as cold and uncaring?
"Somebody always wants something from me," she said in a near whisper. "They're eating me alive."
As you read, you'll be caught up in the lives of Lloyd, the musician; Six, the wonder boy preacher; the high strung and insecure Alice, who pretends her brother Billups needs her when, in reality, she's the one that desperately needs him; Bell, who seeks revenge against Hattie when all she really wants is to know the secret joy her mother found once upon a time; and countless others. Mathis dedicates chapters to the various offspring, but their interactions as children aren't explored as much as they are as adults. She wants you to see who they've become as a result of living in the house.
I love the set up of the book. It feels like a compilation of short stories that are loosely tied together, with the only common thread being that Hattie and August have given birth to them. With the exception of Alice and Billups, we see very little interaction among the siblings once they leave home. It's as if Hattie's lack of love spread to them and there's nothing that bonds any of them together.
Part of the great migration to the north, I wonder how much of Hattie's coldness is a reflection of her surroundings. While her husband, August, longs for the Georgia he remembers, minus Jim Crow, Hattie refuses to even speak its name. Still, you have to wonder if August lamenting over leaving the south is valid. Would Hattie have been different, would the children have had different lives, had they been surrounded by paper shell pecans, sweet gum trees, gigantic peaches and neighbors whose names they could recite years later?
I can't find fault with Hattie Shepherd. Giving birth to your first children at the age of 19 in a new city can be overwhelming. To find yourself giving birth years later at the age of 46 is surprising. Then to turn around at 74 and find yourself mothering your grandchildren, is not an easy road. But how do you explain that to your children who only see you as cold and uncaring?
"Somebody always wants something from me," she said in a near whisper. "They're eating me alive."
As you read, you'll be caught up in the lives of Lloyd, the musician; Six, the wonder boy preacher; the high strung and insecure Alice, who pretends her brother Billups needs her when, in reality, she's the one that desperately needs him; Bell, who seeks revenge against Hattie when all she really wants is to know the secret joy her mother found once upon a time; and countless others. Mathis dedicates chapters to the various offspring, but their interactions as children aren't explored as much as they are as adults. She wants you to see who they've become as a result of living in the house.
I love the set up of the book. It feels like a compilation of short stories that are loosely tied together, with the only common thread being that Hattie and August have given birth to them. With the exception of Alice and Billups, we see very little interaction among the siblings once they leave home. It's as if Hattie's lack of love spread to them and there's nothing that bonds any of them together.
Part of the great migration to the north, I wonder how much of Hattie's coldness is a reflection of her surroundings. While her husband, August, longs for the Georgia he remembers, minus Jim Crow, Hattie refuses to even speak its name. Still, you have to wonder if August lamenting over leaving the south is valid. Would Hattie have been different, would the children have had different lives, had they been surrounded by paper shell pecans, sweet gum trees, gigantic peaches and neighbors whose names they could recite years later?
December 31, 2012
I've read a lot of Oprah's book club books and I've enjoyed most of them. This was no exception and really I'd rate if 3.5 stars if possible. I read it on my kindle and was surprised when I turned the page and it was "acknowledgments", I wasn't ready for the story to end. I suppose there is no ending, that Hattie and her children's lives just continue on the same dysfunctional path because it's very difficult when people are born in poverty, oppression, and abuse to change. Maybe there's hope for Sala, just maybe Hattie does understand and is willing to do what it takes to change this cycle.
November 10, 2012
It is not easy being a mother. It doesn't matter what year you were born, your race, your economic status and it doesn't matter how many children you have. Hattie knew her life wasn't going anywhere fast in Georgia in 1923 so she quickly flees to Philadelphia and marries only to have her life get more complicated instead of easier. Her first joy is the birth of twins and her first (and possibly greatest)tragedy happens at their death from pneumonia. Each chapter is narrated by one of Hattie's nine surviving children. Through them we see a harsh side of her, her disappointment in life that shows itself at every turn and the love of her children which she keeps to herself. Fans of The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God will find themselves falling for The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. Each narrative will break your heart and bind you to this close but vulnerable family. Book clubs would be wise to choose this book as it offers a myriad of discussion topics. I was lucky enough to receive an advance of this author's wonderful debut and it is scheduled to be published in January 2013.
April 25, 2015
3, maybe 3.5 stars for the well done writing.
I so wanted to love this book. I thought from the synopsis I had found the "family saga" that I was craving. I think the idea behind this book, telling the story of one woman and each of her children was a wonderful beginning, but all in all it fell a bit flat for me by the time I got to the end.
Hattie escapes a not so wonderful childhood with hopes for a better life. Those hopes are quickly snuffed out and she seems to always be reaching for her dreams, but never grasping them. Mathis paints a great picture of Hattie and I felt her slowly slip into acceptance that her life would never be what she hoped for. That said, I found her a bit cold and never really warmed to her. The book is divided into narrations from each of her children. This really worked for me...to see how they each made there way out into the world, raised the same yet becoming such different adults. What did not work for me is that I became interested in their stories and then they were gone and I was moved on to the next child. I kept waiting for Mathis to bring them all back around later to see how they each ended up. I didn't feel I got that. Much like their Mother not connecting with them, I had trouble connecting to the book.
That said, the writing was very well done. There were some historic aspects as well as very descriptive settings and situations. I was able to envision what was going on and picture the scene. I was a bit disappointed overall, but it was a good debut. I would read her again.
I so wanted to love this book. I thought from the synopsis I had found the "family saga" that I was craving. I think the idea behind this book, telling the story of one woman and each of her children was a wonderful beginning, but all in all it fell a bit flat for me by the time I got to the end.
Hattie escapes a not so wonderful childhood with hopes for a better life. Those hopes are quickly snuffed out and she seems to always be reaching for her dreams, but never grasping them. Mathis paints a great picture of Hattie and I felt her slowly slip into acceptance that her life would never be what she hoped for. That said, I found her a bit cold and never really warmed to her. The book is divided into narrations from each of her children. This really worked for me...to see how they each made there way out into the world, raised the same yet becoming such different adults. What did not work for me is that I became interested in their stories and then they were gone and I was moved on to the next child. I kept waiting for Mathis to bring them all back around later to see how they each ended up. I didn't feel I got that. Much like their Mother not connecting with them, I had trouble connecting to the book.
That said, the writing was very well done. There were some historic aspects as well as very descriptive settings and situations. I was able to envision what was going on and picture the scene. I was a bit disappointed overall, but it was a good debut. I would read her again.
December 14, 2012
The book opens with a heart rendering tragedy which quickly captures the reader's interest. The great migration, the early 1900's and a mother with her three daughters move to Philadelphia to escape the Jim Crow south. Things do not work out as planned, Hattie has a hard life but does manage to keep nine children alive with very little help. Hattie is a formidable character, she has a strength and resiliency
that keeps her going, but this does not mean she does not carry hurts and scars. The structure of this novel was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first. It is divided and narrated in chapters by some of her children, her husband and Hattie herself. The ones narrated by Hattie were my favorite. This novel follows Hattie and her children for over a decade, and by the end of the book I really felt for Hattie and love the fact that even at the end of the book she never gives up hope. A well written first novel, told in very matter of fact prose, in somewhat of a different narrative style. Well worth reading.
that keeps her going, but this does not mean she does not carry hurts and scars. The structure of this novel was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first. It is divided and narrated in chapters by some of her children, her husband and Hattie herself. The ones narrated by Hattie were my favorite. This novel follows Hattie and her children for over a decade, and by the end of the book I really felt for Hattie and love the fact that even at the end of the book she never gives up hope. A well written first novel, told in very matter of fact prose, in somewhat of a different narrative style. Well worth reading.
December 23, 2013
Mathis’s debut novel is the achingly sad saga of one black family making their way north and fighting to break free from poverty and prejudice.
In the early years of the 1920s, Hattie Shepherd longs to escape from Georgia, where her father was lynched. When she marries August, they set off hopefully for Pennsylvania only to watch their seven-month-old twins, Philadelphia and Jubilee, die of pneumonia despite Hattie’s desperate ministrations.
This loss will haunt Hattie throughout the years to come, even though she bears nine more children (who, together with the dead twins and a granddaughter, form the twelve tribes of the title – an explicit echo of the dozen tribes of Israel in the Hebrew Bible). Violence, disappointment, love affairs, and discrimination: from the 1920s through to the 1980s, Mathis traces an American family in crisis and suggests that, clichéd as it may sound, love may have the power to heal what seem like fatal emotional wounds.
Each chapter shifts to the perspective of another of Hattie’s offspring, in either first- or third-person narration, making for an impressive variety of voices and styles. Readers gain an intimate view of each of the children, but also of Hattie herself, through the composite, peripheral glances each chapter allows. Hattie is a troublesome yet compelling character; as cold as she often seems to her children, she feels things deeply. One perceptive daughter realizes “She’d never seen her mother laugh…She’d never seen any joy in her at all. Hattie had been stern and angry all of Bell’s life, and it occurred to her that her mother must have been very unhappy most of the time.”
Mathis’s novel is also strong at the level of language and allusion; she subverts scriptural narratives even as she relies on them for structure. The pattern of devoting one chapter to each family member reminded me of Hanna Pylväinen’s excellent We Sinners , while the portentous biblical rhetoric, applied to the reality of southern and/or African-American lives, recalls not just Morrison and Walker but also William Faulkner. It’s no surprise that Oprah Winfrey chose The Twelve Tribes of Hattie for her book club relaunch. With writing this confident and characters this convincing, it will be a pleasure to await Mathis’s next work of fiction.
(This review formed part of an article on my Best Fiction Reads of 2013 for Bookkaholic.)
In the early years of the 1920s, Hattie Shepherd longs to escape from Georgia, where her father was lynched. When she marries August, they set off hopefully for Pennsylvania only to watch their seven-month-old twins, Philadelphia and Jubilee, die of pneumonia despite Hattie’s desperate ministrations.
This loss will haunt Hattie throughout the years to come, even though she bears nine more children (who, together with the dead twins and a granddaughter, form the twelve tribes of the title – an explicit echo of the dozen tribes of Israel in the Hebrew Bible). Violence, disappointment, love affairs, and discrimination: from the 1920s through to the 1980s, Mathis traces an American family in crisis and suggests that, clichéd as it may sound, love may have the power to heal what seem like fatal emotional wounds.
Each chapter shifts to the perspective of another of Hattie’s offspring, in either first- or third-person narration, making for an impressive variety of voices and styles. Readers gain an intimate view of each of the children, but also of Hattie herself, through the composite, peripheral glances each chapter allows. Hattie is a troublesome yet compelling character; as cold as she often seems to her children, she feels things deeply. One perceptive daughter realizes “She’d never seen her mother laugh…She’d never seen any joy in her at all. Hattie had been stern and angry all of Bell’s life, and it occurred to her that her mother must have been very unhappy most of the time.”
Mathis’s novel is also strong at the level of language and allusion; she subverts scriptural narratives even as she relies on them for structure. The pattern of devoting one chapter to each family member reminded me of Hanna Pylväinen’s excellent We Sinners , while the portentous biblical rhetoric, applied to the reality of southern and/or African-American lives, recalls not just Morrison and Walker but also William Faulkner. It’s no surprise that Oprah Winfrey chose The Twelve Tribes of Hattie for her book club relaunch. With writing this confident and characters this convincing, it will be a pleasure to await Mathis’s next work of fiction.
(This review formed part of an article on my Best Fiction Reads of 2013 for Bookkaholic.)
May 4, 2014
This book drew me in right away. The story centers around an African American woman, Hattie, who leaves the south yet is still entrenched in it in many ways. Most chapters focus on the life of one of her many children, and includes the date, which really gave me a perspective of life in those times, especially for someone of color. I felt the whole story merged together nicely, and flowed in a way that kept me connected to all the characters. Reminiscent of Toni Morrison, the writing is superb. I'm a sucker for any character driven book, and this one was excellent.
February 1, 2013
A good first effort for the writer. I like the snippet way the stories were told; in that format, I as the reader had my own opportunity to flesh out the characters/stories. Despite being able to do that, I still felt that some of the characters were under-developed. I felt robbed with some stories, they ended so quickly without much substance while others were packed to the gills from beginning to end.
In my own life experience, I've met Hattie and her tribe, multiple times. In some cases some members of the tribes were able to rise above their beginnings and create a more successful end. I wish that had been the case for some of the members of Hattie and her tribe -- even if just one of them.
Even reading this fictional account, there was the reminder that "life is difficult" (Scott Peck). Life must be hard carrying around all that hurt, anger and dysfunction. But it doesn't have to be all difficult if we choose to acknowledge, then make positive changes to the negative aspect(s) of our situations that we've contributed.
I'll definitely read this book again, maybe not cover to cover -- in the order the book was published -- like I did this time.
I'll definitely recommend this read to others.
In my own life experience, I've met Hattie and her tribe, multiple times. In some cases some members of the tribes were able to rise above their beginnings and create a more successful end. I wish that had been the case for some of the members of Hattie and her tribe -- even if just one of them.
Even reading this fictional account, there was the reminder that "life is difficult" (Scott Peck). Life must be hard carrying around all that hurt, anger and dysfunction. But it doesn't have to be all difficult if we choose to acknowledge, then make positive changes to the negative aspect(s) of our situations that we've contributed.
I'll definitely read this book again, maybe not cover to cover -- in the order the book was published -- like I did this time.
I'll definitely recommend this read to others.
September 4, 2018
Updated August 13, 2018
Having read this novel five years later, I am still impressed that it is a debut novel, however I am not as blown away as I was before.
In this novel we meet Hattie Shepherd who leaves Georgia looking for a better life in Philadelphia. She marries, but the marriage is unfulfilling. She ends up giving birth to nine children and raises them on hope, faith and prayer. Things do not improve as we would like for Hattie, to be fair it gets worse. The book is told in such a way that we are given insight into each of the nine children. There is a lot happening at the same time but overall the story just reeks sadness and poverty. Some of Hattie's children are more interested than others so I held out until the end. It was an enjoyable re-read.
May 23, 2013
Spectacular. Well Written. Captivating. Haunting. Just plain mind blowing. This book reminded me of why I love reading, the feeling of starting a book a just not wanting to put it down. Mathis told a story through various characters and with each chapter its as if you were being told a different story. Loved every minute of it. Really an awesome book.
Having read this novel five years later, I am still impressed that it is a debut novel, however I am not as blown away as I was before.
In this novel we meet Hattie Shepherd who leaves Georgia looking for a better life in Philadelphia. She marries, but the marriage is unfulfilling. She ends up giving birth to nine children and raises them on hope, faith and prayer. Things do not improve as we would like for Hattie, to be fair it gets worse. The book is told in such a way that we are given insight into each of the nine children. There is a lot happening at the same time but overall the story just reeks sadness and poverty. Some of Hattie's children are more interested than others so I held out until the end. It was an enjoyable re-read.
May 23, 2013
Spectacular. Well Written. Captivating. Haunting. Just plain mind blowing. This book reminded me of why I love reading, the feeling of starting a book a just not wanting to put it down. Mathis told a story through various characters and with each chapter its as if you were being told a different story. Loved every minute of it. Really an awesome book.
April 2, 2013
I had mixed feelings while reading this book. It is really 12 short stories with a bit of overlap between the characters. It was well written and compelling at times, but I didn't have the opportunity to really get to know any of the characters or get very invested in their stories.
August 9, 2013
3.5 Stars - Individual narratives of the lives of Hattie Shepherd’s children that span the course of 55 years.
It had been a looooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggg time since I read something just because Oprah told me too, but that’s exactly why I read this book. Suffice it to say that Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 is a second verse, same as the first. If you’ve read enough of Oprah’s selections, you’ll know she likes some misery in her book club. Luckily it was a quick read, because I don’t think I had enough wine in the house to drown my sorrows if this one would have taken more than a day. If you want a book with a silver lining, don’t read this. If you don’t mind spending an hour or two going over the pros and cons of sticking your head in an oven due to the overwhelming despair that embody the lives of everyone in the Shepherd family, dive on in.
It had been a looooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggg time since I read something just because Oprah told me too, but that’s exactly why I read this book. Suffice it to say that Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 is a second verse, same as the first. If you’ve read enough of Oprah’s selections, you’ll know she likes some misery in her book club. Luckily it was a quick read, because I don’t think I had enough wine in the house to drown my sorrows if this one would have taken more than a day. If you want a book with a silver lining, don’t read this. If you don’t mind spending an hour or two going over the pros and cons of sticking your head in an oven due to the overwhelming despair that embody the lives of everyone in the Shepherd family, dive on in.
December 17, 2012
Completed the book on December 9. Interesting how author reflected the main character chapter by chapter. Interesting read that I relate to personally based on family and other connections during same era, culture and migration. Can't wait for discussions to begin, I'm interested to see what others thought of the book as well. Now learned not to spoil for others still reading. Good reading, waiting to discuss!! Thank you.
April 3, 2013
This book is divided into 12 chapters with each chapter being told by or about one of Hattie's children. The stories were well written and kept my attention, but were only connected through Hattie. After the one chapter, that character was not heard from again. This left me wondering about how things turned out for each character, but we never find out. Each story is depressing and tragic. Hattie has a lot to deal with--poverty, a womanizing husband, and too many children to care for. She loses the ability to be loving and tender. Her children suffer because of this.
"Hattie knew her children did not think her a kind woman--perhaps she wasn't, but there hadn't been time for sentiment when they were young. She had failed them in vital ways, but what good would it have done to spend the days hugging and kissing if there hadn't been anything to put in their bellies? They didn't understand that all the love she had was taken up with feeding them and clothing them and preparing them to meet the world. The world would not love them; the world would not be kind."
Just too dysfunctional and depressing for more than two stars.
"Hattie knew her children did not think her a kind woman--perhaps she wasn't, but there hadn't been time for sentiment when they were young. She had failed them in vital ways, but what good would it have done to spend the days hugging and kissing if there hadn't been anything to put in their bellies? They didn't understand that all the love she had was taken up with feeding them and clothing them and preparing them to meet the world. The world would not love them; the world would not be kind."
Just too dysfunctional and depressing for more than two stars.
February 10, 2013
This book really brought the reader through a journey of so many elements of Black struggle, self-identity, poverty, sexuality, racial discrimination, and much more. I believe that almost every character deserves his or her own book, each chapter could have continued into a true and real story. I hope the author is considering this, and that she finds success telling the stories of a great people.
February 6, 2013
Tender Grandmother
A horrendous event leads teenage Hattie and her mother and sisters to abandon their beloved Georgia home and flee north to Philadelphia. There Hattie grows up quickly getting married and having twins before she turns 16. She’s shocked and devastated by how much she loves her children and by how much her husband August lets her down. Hattie is not a perfect mother, in fact most of “Tribes” is about her parental short comings but to be fair to her she gets little help from her husband and little from her community since her pride prevents that. Hattie is determined to survive and to feed her children. Their emotional needs seem to be beyond her caretaking.
The book alternates chapters of some of her children and the aftermath of how they weather their upbringing, none seem to thrive. Some barely survive. They’re all compromised either emotionally or physically or both. Hattie is tough and still retains a capacity to dream which is probably the only thing that sustains her. Her children are less lucky.
I read this book with mixed feelings. Jumping from character to character with only Hattie being a constant was disconcerting. The almost unrelenting hardships were not enjoyable. Many of the characters were unlikeable. The writing was good but it felt uninspired. I have the sense that this was purposeful on Mathis’s part to help convey these hard lives. Death and disaster was always a step away. One misstep would clench it. Thankfully Hattie gets a chance to redeem herself through her relationship with one of her granddaughters. Outside mere endurance this is the only brightness in the book. Ayana Mathis is definitely a writer to watch. I left this book wondering if it had let me down or I had failed by not liking it more.
This review is based on an advanced reading copy received from the publisher.
A horrendous event leads teenage Hattie and her mother and sisters to abandon their beloved Georgia home and flee north to Philadelphia. There Hattie grows up quickly getting married and having twins before she turns 16. She’s shocked and devastated by how much she loves her children and by how much her husband August lets her down. Hattie is not a perfect mother, in fact most of “Tribes” is about her parental short comings but to be fair to her she gets little help from her husband and little from her community since her pride prevents that. Hattie is determined to survive and to feed her children. Their emotional needs seem to be beyond her caretaking.
The book alternates chapters of some of her children and the aftermath of how they weather their upbringing, none seem to thrive. Some barely survive. They’re all compromised either emotionally or physically or both. Hattie is tough and still retains a capacity to dream which is probably the only thing that sustains her. Her children are less lucky.
I read this book with mixed feelings. Jumping from character to character with only Hattie being a constant was disconcerting. The almost unrelenting hardships were not enjoyable. Many of the characters were unlikeable. The writing was good but it felt uninspired. I have the sense that this was purposeful on Mathis’s part to help convey these hard lives. Death and disaster was always a step away. One misstep would clench it. Thankfully Hattie gets a chance to redeem herself through her relationship with one of her granddaughters. Outside mere endurance this is the only brightness in the book. Ayana Mathis is definitely a writer to watch. I left this book wondering if it had let me down or I had failed by not liking it more.
This review is based on an advanced reading copy received from the publisher.
November 12, 2013
Bookstores crumble under Amazon’s hegemony. Book sections vanish into journalism’s glory days. And book critics fade behind a cacophony of online reviews.
But Oprah abides!
In the latest demonstration of Her awesome power, the talk-show diva smiled early on a debut novel scheduled for release in January. Knopf, one of the nation’s most prestigious publishers, immediately bowed to O’s wishes, more than doubled its print run and moved the release up a month — into the publishing wasteland of mid-December.
More power to her. So what if all the important best-of-the-year lists have already appeared (along with the National Book Awards)? Nothing is more valuable than that “Oprah’s Book Club” sticker on the dust jacket, which guarantees Ayana Mathis’s novel a vastly larger audience than it might have drawn.
Making the selection for what she now calls her Book Club 2.0, Winfrey invoked the name of the author of one of her earlier picks, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, but that’s potentially misleading. Although they both write about the travails of African American women, Mathis is a more accessible writer. Her prose style, polished at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is clean and transparent, and though she manipulates time and chronology in sophisticated ways, she never leaves us, as Morrison sometimes does, in the dense mist of her private vision (see: “A Mercy”).
“The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” falls into that growing tradition of books that hover somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories — an unintended effect, perhaps, of the workshop setting that so many writers pass through nowadays. Like the chapters in Kevin Powers’s Iraq war novel “The Yellow Birds,” sections of Mathis’s book cry out for anthologizing, but their effect grows richer and more complex as they accrue.
The first chapter, set in 1925, is a fever dream of parental panic, a tale about the death of infant twins that suggests “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” will be the kind of overwrought maternal tragedy that Winfrey is too often unfairly charged with favoring. In fact, Mathis has something more subtle in store. The next chapter picks up two decades later, and each subsequent chapter jumps ahead a few years, rotating through the lives of Hattie Shepherd’s many children — “the twelve tribes.”
Among the wonders of Mathis’s storytelling is her ability to orient us gracefully in each of these new settings. Some of Hattie’s children have wandered far, others have remained under her care, but none can escape the infection of her anger, her incurable resentment at her husband, “the greatest mistake of her life,” who subjects her to “these endless pregnancies.”
The first adult child we meet is 22-year-old Floyd, an itinerant trumpet player who has his pick of fans after every gig. The subject of this moving story is all its own, but Mathis quickly establishes themes that run throughout the remaining chapters. Despite his promiscuous treatment of women, what really troubles Floyd is his attraction to other men. Twenty years before Stonewall, this young musician has no way to comprehend himself except in the tropes laid down by his family’s church — as an abomination, a Judas. Far from home, Floyd feels “like a kite broken off from its string.” His increasingly reckless desire is “a thing too awful to be tolerated.” Denying his affections, “Floyd smelled his cowardice; he was all rot inside.”
While a violently homophobic culture exacerbates Floyd’s self-loathing, that desperate sense of inadequacy is the horrible legacy Hattie has left to all the children she raised with such ferocious single-mindedness. They yearn to be normal, settled, respectable — to grasp the prize that has eluded their mother. Healthy or sick, successful or impoverished, none of them ever feel the balm of her love. Even her glad-handing husband thinks, “If she would stop hating him for one day, one hour, he’d have the strength to do the right thing by her.”
That longing for her approval takes a fascinating turn in the story of Six, Hattie’s runty teenage son. Badly scalded in a childhood accident, he grows up seething with rage but also prone to fits of divine eloquence. In church, grace comes “on him like a seizure and then [leaves] him . . . frail and hurting,” Mathis writes. “He knew his Jesus spells were another indicator that he was a freak, not merely of body but of spirit. His soul was susceptible to God’s whimsy, just as his body was susceptible to any opportunistic thing that might hurt it.” Sent away to preach in Alabama church revivals when he’s just 15, Six regards his ability to inspire and heal as a curse, a power that makes him feel inadequate and fraudulent. This enthralling chapter, laced with allusions to the Gospels, delves into knotty issues of spirituality and doubt in ways that recall the work of John Updike and Marilynne Robinson.
As these tragic tales play out and the death of her twins fades from immediacy, there’s a risk that Hattie will seem just a harridan, a frigid wife, an angry mother who whispers at one point, “Somebody always wants something from me. They’re eating me alive.” But Mathis returns to her again and again, adding new dimensions to this portrait of a matriarch constantly struggling against poverty and disappointment. “How was she supposed to bear a life like this?” she wonders. We see her abandon a chance for romance in favor of her family’s survival, and in the novel’s most breathtaking chapter, she considers a sacrifice that will kill her.
Too many writers of literary fiction tend to stage intimate stories in the hermetically sealed worlds of their own clever imaginations, but Mathis never loses touch with the geography and the changing national culture through which her characters move. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” is infused with African Americans’ conflicted attitudes about the North and the South during the Great Migration. After fleeing Georgia with her widowed mother, young Hattie vows never to leave Philadelphia, where she and her children eventually settle for good, but the past holds a tempting allure for many of these regional refugees. Fears about how they’ll be judged, by white people and fellow black residents, inform the attitudes and longings of these women for decades. “They were, most of them, perpetually donning and polishing their northern-city selves,” Mathis writes, “molting whatever little southern town they or their families had come from five or ten or twenty years before . . . or bragging about their families’ wide porches in whatever good Negro neighborhood they’d lived in, which was just a roundabout way of demanding that Philadelphia give them their due.”
In the long family arc that Mathis describes, the painful life of one remarkably resilient woman is placed against the hopes and struggles of millions of African Americans who held this nation to its promise. Without Oprah’s intervention, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” might have been one of the greatest novels of 2013. But now — just in time — it’s certainly one of the best of 2012.
But Oprah abides!
In the latest demonstration of Her awesome power, the talk-show diva smiled early on a debut novel scheduled for release in January. Knopf, one of the nation’s most prestigious publishers, immediately bowed to O’s wishes, more than doubled its print run and moved the release up a month — into the publishing wasteland of mid-December.
More power to her. So what if all the important best-of-the-year lists have already appeared (along with the National Book Awards)? Nothing is more valuable than that “Oprah’s Book Club” sticker on the dust jacket, which guarantees Ayana Mathis’s novel a vastly larger audience than it might have drawn.
Making the selection for what she now calls her Book Club 2.0, Winfrey invoked the name of the author of one of her earlier picks, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, but that’s potentially misleading. Although they both write about the travails of African American women, Mathis is a more accessible writer. Her prose style, polished at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is clean and transparent, and though she manipulates time and chronology in sophisticated ways, she never leaves us, as Morrison sometimes does, in the dense mist of her private vision (see: “A Mercy”).
“The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” falls into that growing tradition of books that hover somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories — an unintended effect, perhaps, of the workshop setting that so many writers pass through nowadays. Like the chapters in Kevin Powers’s Iraq war novel “The Yellow Birds,” sections of Mathis’s book cry out for anthologizing, but their effect grows richer and more complex as they accrue.
The first chapter, set in 1925, is a fever dream of parental panic, a tale about the death of infant twins that suggests “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” will be the kind of overwrought maternal tragedy that Winfrey is too often unfairly charged with favoring. In fact, Mathis has something more subtle in store. The next chapter picks up two decades later, and each subsequent chapter jumps ahead a few years, rotating through the lives of Hattie Shepherd’s many children — “the twelve tribes.”
Among the wonders of Mathis’s storytelling is her ability to orient us gracefully in each of these new settings. Some of Hattie’s children have wandered far, others have remained under her care, but none can escape the infection of her anger, her incurable resentment at her husband, “the greatest mistake of her life,” who subjects her to “these endless pregnancies.”
The first adult child we meet is 22-year-old Floyd, an itinerant trumpet player who has his pick of fans after every gig. The subject of this moving story is all its own, but Mathis quickly establishes themes that run throughout the remaining chapters. Despite his promiscuous treatment of women, what really troubles Floyd is his attraction to other men. Twenty years before Stonewall, this young musician has no way to comprehend himself except in the tropes laid down by his family’s church — as an abomination, a Judas. Far from home, Floyd feels “like a kite broken off from its string.” His increasingly reckless desire is “a thing too awful to be tolerated.” Denying his affections, “Floyd smelled his cowardice; he was all rot inside.”
While a violently homophobic culture exacerbates Floyd’s self-loathing, that desperate sense of inadequacy is the horrible legacy Hattie has left to all the children she raised with such ferocious single-mindedness. They yearn to be normal, settled, respectable — to grasp the prize that has eluded their mother. Healthy or sick, successful or impoverished, none of them ever feel the balm of her love. Even her glad-handing husband thinks, “If she would stop hating him for one day, one hour, he’d have the strength to do the right thing by her.”
That longing for her approval takes a fascinating turn in the story of Six, Hattie’s runty teenage son. Badly scalded in a childhood accident, he grows up seething with rage but also prone to fits of divine eloquence. In church, grace comes “on him like a seizure and then [leaves] him . . . frail and hurting,” Mathis writes. “He knew his Jesus spells were another indicator that he was a freak, not merely of body but of spirit. His soul was susceptible to God’s whimsy, just as his body was susceptible to any opportunistic thing that might hurt it.” Sent away to preach in Alabama church revivals when he’s just 15, Six regards his ability to inspire and heal as a curse, a power that makes him feel inadequate and fraudulent. This enthralling chapter, laced with allusions to the Gospels, delves into knotty issues of spirituality and doubt in ways that recall the work of John Updike and Marilynne Robinson.
As these tragic tales play out and the death of her twins fades from immediacy, there’s a risk that Hattie will seem just a harridan, a frigid wife, an angry mother who whispers at one point, “Somebody always wants something from me. They’re eating me alive.” But Mathis returns to her again and again, adding new dimensions to this portrait of a matriarch constantly struggling against poverty and disappointment. “How was she supposed to bear a life like this?” she wonders. We see her abandon a chance for romance in favor of her family’s survival, and in the novel’s most breathtaking chapter, she considers a sacrifice that will kill her.
Too many writers of literary fiction tend to stage intimate stories in the hermetically sealed worlds of their own clever imaginations, but Mathis never loses touch with the geography and the changing national culture through which her characters move. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” is infused with African Americans’ conflicted attitudes about the North and the South during the Great Migration. After fleeing Georgia with her widowed mother, young Hattie vows never to leave Philadelphia, where she and her children eventually settle for good, but the past holds a tempting allure for many of these regional refugees. Fears about how they’ll be judged, by white people and fellow black residents, inform the attitudes and longings of these women for decades. “They were, most of them, perpetually donning and polishing their northern-city selves,” Mathis writes, “molting whatever little southern town they or their families had come from five or ten or twenty years before . . . or bragging about their families’ wide porches in whatever good Negro neighborhood they’d lived in, which was just a roundabout way of demanding that Philadelphia give them their due.”
In the long family arc that Mathis describes, the painful life of one remarkably resilient woman is placed against the hopes and struggles of millions of African Americans who held this nation to its promise. Without Oprah’s intervention, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” might have been one of the greatest novels of 2013. But now — just in time — it’s certainly one of the best of 2012.
September 5, 2014
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is the story of Hattie Shepherd, a woman who at the age of fifteen participated in The Great Migration with her mother and two sisters in 1923. Hattie's father is murdered by a couple of whites in town wanting to take over his blacksmith business. Hattie loses her twins to pneumonia at the age of seventeen which seems to set her down a path of being an Ice Queen.
The sleeve of the book states that after giving "birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind." Each chapter is about one of the children and grandchild from her lineage but what is lacking is "life lessons" that Hattie believed she was instilling in her children. Each child is lost, confused and uncertain about how to love and what love really is because of Hattie's "rage" and indifference towards them.
The chapters held an interest within themselves that left me wanting more. Ayana Mathis tries to cram a personality and past into a chapter that is lacking and then weakly linked with the others. The children grew up in a home but they all seem so separate and disconnected from one another.
I have found myself lost on Hattie's "monumental courage" as she has seemed to float through life living and feeding off of rage, vanity and bitterness that she herself is the harbinger of her own "ruin". She didn't marry for love but seemingly out of spite for her mother. The "love" she every had was destroyed with the death of her first children, the twins, Philadelphia and Jubilee. With their death seems to come a sense of coldness that none can touch or understand - neither Hattie herself.
The time jump between chapters is confusing and there really isn't a building of the characters or that of Hattie, the link that ties all the individuals together. In the confusion, it is uncertain who is the oldest and who is the baby of the family. Hattie's affection seems to end the moment a child is able to walk, from then on they are just another mouth to feed and body to clothe.
The twelve tribes of Hattie's problems range from bi-sexuality, schizophrenia, TB, alcoholism, sexual abuse victim, mental breakdown and a heavenly bed roller. Each of her children seem to resent her in some way and yet have found some way to make peace with their uncaring mother - how it is never truly explained. The only child she has ever seemed supportive of is Franklin, a trumpet playing musician (also, the bi-sexual), who decided to ignore Hattie's advice and follow his dreams. The others either depended upon themselves, much too heavily in the case of Alice, who believes that her life's purpose is to look after her younger brother, Billiups, and continually remind him that he was sexually abused by a trusted tutor; or solely in themselves.
One child is invited to live with Hattie and August but is completely missing in the next chapter would fit in the same timeline.
The stories are written beautifully, individually and would probably do well as a short story within itself but to have them all tied together simply did not work. The connection was lost and there seems to be no redemption for any of the characters, not Hattie who decides in the end to prevent her daughter from a religious experience for no other reason than that she herself was living a farce of a church life. Even in her sixties, Hattie seems just as lost, prideful and vain as when she was first introduced; which for a woman who married a boy she didn't love, had multiple children with him, had an affair with another man and birthed his child, attempted to leave her husband but returned later that night, and felt that she was better than everyone around her, even her own children, seems grossly under prepared to deal with the emotional turmoil of a young girl who has lost her mother to a mental disease. Hattie's own granddaughter had even questioned her own mother if she ever loved Hattie.
Once again, nicely written but as a whole the story is lost, confusing and fails to offer the supposedly promised "uplifting" moment in life.
The sleeve of the book states that after giving "birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind." Each chapter is about one of the children and grandchild from her lineage but what is lacking is "life lessons" that Hattie believed she was instilling in her children. Each child is lost, confused and uncertain about how to love and what love really is because of Hattie's "rage" and indifference towards them.
The chapters held an interest within themselves that left me wanting more. Ayana Mathis tries to cram a personality and past into a chapter that is lacking and then weakly linked with the others. The children grew up in a home but they all seem so separate and disconnected from one another.
I have found myself lost on Hattie's "monumental courage" as she has seemed to float through life living and feeding off of rage, vanity and bitterness that she herself is the harbinger of her own "ruin". She didn't marry for love but seemingly out of spite for her mother. The "love" she every had was destroyed with the death of her first children, the twins, Philadelphia and Jubilee. With their death seems to come a sense of coldness that none can touch or understand - neither Hattie herself.
The time jump between chapters is confusing and there really isn't a building of the characters or that of Hattie, the link that ties all the individuals together. In the confusion, it is uncertain who is the oldest and who is the baby of the family. Hattie's affection seems to end the moment a child is able to walk, from then on they are just another mouth to feed and body to clothe.
The twelve tribes of Hattie's problems range from bi-sexuality, schizophrenia, TB, alcoholism, sexual abuse victim, mental breakdown and a heavenly bed roller. Each of her children seem to resent her in some way and yet have found some way to make peace with their uncaring mother - how it is never truly explained. The only child she has ever seemed supportive of is Franklin, a trumpet playing musician (also, the bi-sexual), who decided to ignore Hattie's advice and follow his dreams. The others either depended upon themselves, much too heavily in the case of Alice, who believes that her life's purpose is to look after her younger brother, Billiups, and continually remind him that he was sexually abused by a trusted tutor; or solely in themselves.
One child is invited to live with Hattie and August but is completely missing in the next chapter would fit in the same timeline.
The stories are written beautifully, individually and would probably do well as a short story within itself but to have them all tied together simply did not work. The connection was lost and there seems to be no redemption for any of the characters, not Hattie who decides in the end to prevent her daughter from a religious experience for no other reason than that she herself was living a farce of a church life. Even in her sixties, Hattie seems just as lost, prideful and vain as when she was first introduced; which for a woman who married a boy she didn't love, had multiple children with him, had an affair with another man and birthed his child, attempted to leave her husband but returned later that night, and felt that she was better than everyone around her, even her own children, seems grossly under prepared to deal with the emotional turmoil of a young girl who has lost her mother to a mental disease. Hattie's own granddaughter had even questioned her own mother if she ever loved Hattie.
Once again, nicely written but as a whole the story is lost, confusing and fails to offer the supposedly promised "uplifting" moment in life.
February 28, 2022
Ayana Mathis’s debut novel, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie”, is so good and beautiful and emotionally draining that I actually began to question whether it was truly Mathis’s first book and/or whether she really could be as young as she claims to be (42). The book has the finesse and power of an experienced writer and the heart and soul of a much older person, one who has lived several generations.
One will not get past the first chapter unscathed. Whether or not one chooses to continue reading---knowing the power that Mathis wields at sucker-punching us in the gut and setting the stage for a lifetime of hardship and tragedy for the family at the heart of the novel---is entirely dependent on the reader, but I heartily recommend drying your eyes (you will be bawling, I assure you, after just the first chapter), sucking it up, and carrying on. It’s worth it.
At the heart of the story is Hattie Shepherd, a young black girl who fled Georgia with her family in 1923 during the Great Migration and settled in Philadelphia, where she vowed never to return to the racist South. She was 15 years old at the time. Shortly thereafter, she met, fell in love with, and married a man named August; a man who would prove to be a source of constant heartache and headaches but who she continues to love despite her better judgment. They had twins that Hattie enthusiastically named Philadelphia and Jubilee. The twins never made it to their first birthday, dying from pneumonia that could have been prevented with penicillin, which they couldn’t afford.
The rest of the book follows, in chapters that could be read as their own self-contained short stories (much like Elizabeth Strout’s novel “Olive Kitteridge”), the nine other children that Hattie subsequently birthed. Each one, in their own way, is impacted by Hattie’s tough, affectionless, but loving upbringing.
Floyd : a wild, carefree Jazz musician who slowly begins to discover that he is gay, but he discovers simultaneously that he is too much of a coward to admit it.
Six : the boy who nearly died as a youngster, struggles with faith and fidelity while becoming a well-known revivalist preacher.
Ruthie : the daughter that Hattie has with another man, during a period in her life in which she can no longer tolerate August’s philandering and laziness.
Ella : the daughter she gave up, given reluctantly to her childless sister to raise in the hopes of a better life.
Alice and Billups : the two with a horrible secret, one that threatens to ruin both their lives, especially Alice, who lives with an unexpressed regret and a guilt over the fact that she couldn’t protect her younger brother, Billy, when he needed her to.
Franklin : the one who went to Vietnam, leaving behind an unhappy wife and a child he will never meet.
Bell : the one most like Hattie in spirit and temperament, and, thusly, the one who feels the most unloved.
Cassie : the mentally ill child, whose illness thankfully has a name and a treatment, if she is willing to accept it.
Sala : Cassie’s child, Hattie’s grandchild, who embodies a late-in-life second chance for Hattie to provide a child with the proper guidance she couldn’t offer her own.
Mathis’s writing has already been compared with the writing of Toni Morrison, one of my favorite authors, and it is an appropriate comparison. Mathis writes with a keen eye for history and an even keener knowledge of the human condition. This book is wonderful, and Mathis is definitely an author to keep an eye on in the future.
One will not get past the first chapter unscathed. Whether or not one chooses to continue reading---knowing the power that Mathis wields at sucker-punching us in the gut and setting the stage for a lifetime of hardship and tragedy for the family at the heart of the novel---is entirely dependent on the reader, but I heartily recommend drying your eyes (you will be bawling, I assure you, after just the first chapter), sucking it up, and carrying on. It’s worth it.
At the heart of the story is Hattie Shepherd, a young black girl who fled Georgia with her family in 1923 during the Great Migration and settled in Philadelphia, where she vowed never to return to the racist South. She was 15 years old at the time. Shortly thereafter, she met, fell in love with, and married a man named August; a man who would prove to be a source of constant heartache and headaches but who she continues to love despite her better judgment. They had twins that Hattie enthusiastically named Philadelphia and Jubilee. The twins never made it to their first birthday, dying from pneumonia that could have been prevented with penicillin, which they couldn’t afford.
The rest of the book follows, in chapters that could be read as their own self-contained short stories (much like Elizabeth Strout’s novel “Olive Kitteridge”), the nine other children that Hattie subsequently birthed. Each one, in their own way, is impacted by Hattie’s tough, affectionless, but loving upbringing.
Floyd : a wild, carefree Jazz musician who slowly begins to discover that he is gay, but he discovers simultaneously that he is too much of a coward to admit it.
Six : the boy who nearly died as a youngster, struggles with faith and fidelity while becoming a well-known revivalist preacher.
Ruthie : the daughter that Hattie has with another man, during a period in her life in which she can no longer tolerate August’s philandering and laziness.
Ella : the daughter she gave up, given reluctantly to her childless sister to raise in the hopes of a better life.
Alice and Billups : the two with a horrible secret, one that threatens to ruin both their lives, especially Alice, who lives with an unexpressed regret and a guilt over the fact that she couldn’t protect her younger brother, Billy, when he needed her to.
Franklin : the one who went to Vietnam, leaving behind an unhappy wife and a child he will never meet.
Bell : the one most like Hattie in spirit and temperament, and, thusly, the one who feels the most unloved.
Cassie : the mentally ill child, whose illness thankfully has a name and a treatment, if she is willing to accept it.
Sala : Cassie’s child, Hattie’s grandchild, who embodies a late-in-life second chance for Hattie to provide a child with the proper guidance she couldn’t offer her own.
Mathis’s writing has already been compared with the writing of Toni Morrison, one of my favorite authors, and it is an appropriate comparison. Mathis writes with a keen eye for history and an even keener knowledge of the human condition. This book is wonderful, and Mathis is definitely an author to keep an eye on in the future.
February 5, 2013
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding The Twelve Tribes of Hattie as it is one of Oprah's Book Club Picks and destined to be a bestseller as a result. So is the hype justified?
Hattie Shepherd is part of the Great Migration, moving from Georgia to Philadelphia in the mid 1920s, hoping for a new start in life. Aged just 17, the story of her new life begins with the tragic death of her twin babies, Philadelphia and Jubilee who had ironically been given "names of promise and hope, reaching-forward names, not looking-back ones". Surely she has already had her share of tragedy but no, there is a lot more to follow as she gives birth to nine more children whose lives are equally imbued with sadness and it is these eleven off-spring plus one grand-daughter further down the line who comprise her "twelve tribes".
There is much to weep about - a womanising preacher, marital difficulties, tuberculosis, gambling, confused sexual identity, mental illness...a diversity of dysfunctionality. In order to survive the harsh reality of her life, Hattie hardens her heart and gives the impression of having no love for her off-spring but you just know she would be there for them in their hour of need. Indeed this is more a story about motherhood than the Great Migration.
There are so many characters and the novel's structure, almost a series of short stories/vignettes about Hattie's children, unfortunately prevents a really deep understanding of characters and their motivation. Having said that, it is beautifully written and a very impressive debut novel.
Hattie Shepherd is part of the Great Migration, moving from Georgia to Philadelphia in the mid 1920s, hoping for a new start in life. Aged just 17, the story of her new life begins with the tragic death of her twin babies, Philadelphia and Jubilee who had ironically been given "names of promise and hope, reaching-forward names, not looking-back ones". Surely she has already had her share of tragedy but no, there is a lot more to follow as she gives birth to nine more children whose lives are equally imbued with sadness and it is these eleven off-spring plus one grand-daughter further down the line who comprise her "twelve tribes".
There is much to weep about - a womanising preacher, marital difficulties, tuberculosis, gambling, confused sexual identity, mental illness...a diversity of dysfunctionality. In order to survive the harsh reality of her life, Hattie hardens her heart and gives the impression of having no love for her off-spring but you just know she would be there for them in their hour of need. Indeed this is more a story about motherhood than the Great Migration.
There are so many characters and the novel's structure, almost a series of short stories/vignettes about Hattie's children, unfortunately prevents a really deep understanding of characters and their motivation. Having said that, it is beautifully written and a very impressive debut novel.
May 4, 2013
I liked it but I didn't love it. It was okay for me. Each chapter is dedicated to one of Hattie's children. Due to this I felt like I was reading small individual stories and not one main story. That worked for me in Elizabeth Stout's Olive Kitteridge but it did not work for me with this book. The writing is very good, some of the stories powerful but in the end, it just did not move me and I really didn't really care enough about any of the characters.
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