Review
Ayana Mathis's debut novel
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is a stunning, penetrating portrait of a woman through the eyes of her children. Hattie arrives in Philadelphia in 1923, as part of the Great Migration, the huge tide of African Americans that left the South for other areas of the United States between 1910-1970. Full of hope for the future and amazed by the differences between her childhood home in Georgia and the progressive northern city, she marries August and has twins. She names the children Philadelphia and Jubilee to celebrate the brightness of her new life. As the story unfolds, and disappointments accrue, Hattie's initial vibrancy fades to a terse, hard-lipped discontent. Each year brings a new child and another mouth to feed. August's devotion to his wife ends at the jingle of the local juke and the sashay of another woman's skirts. Hattie's challenges seem...
Beyond the Book
The Great Migration describes a large-scale movement of African-Americans out of the South between 1910 and 1970. Hattie, moving from Georgia to Philadelphia, would have no doubt agreed with Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson's assessment of the Great Migration as "six million black Southerners moving out of the terror of Jim Crow to an uncertain existence in the North and Midwest."
African Americans began to leave the South shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, but in small numbers. By the turn of the 20th century, though, segregation, lynchings, and few employment opportunities in the South, forced many blacks to seek their fortunes elsewhere. So many left during this period, in fact, that African-American population growth froze for a period in...
