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A Novel
by Nikesha Elise Williams
Book Reviewed by:From the two-time Emmy Award–winning producer and host of the Black and Published podcast comes a sweeping multi-generational epic following seven generations of Dupree women as they navigate love, loss, and the unyielding ties of family in the tradition of Homegoing and The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois.
It's 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family's past, including why she left Land's End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers.
From Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby's fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night in 1980 that changed Nadia's future forever, the Dupree women carry the weight of their heritage. Bound by a mysterious malediction that means they will only give birth to daughters, the Dupree women confront a legacy of pain, resilience, and survival that began with an enslaved ancestor who risked everything for freedom.
The Seven Daughters of Dupree masterfully weaves together themes of generational trauma, Black women's resilience, and unbreakable familial bonds. Echoing the literary power of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, Nikesha Elise Williams delivers a feminist literary fiction that explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women.
Prologue
They cut off her head because she ran. But who could know? Certainly not Tati. She was looking for her daddy. Her mama, Nadia, wouldn't tell her. Gladys, her mimi, wouldn't tell her either. So she searched for him. She didn't know to search for anyone else. It wasn't like there was a burial or body; no coffin, no cemetery. But in a way she found her. In fact, she found them all, including her daddy. In the kitchen table whisperings and the basement murmurings where her mother used a hot comb to press out her hair every Saturday night.
1.
March 1995
The noxious scent of burnt hair and relaxer coldcocked Tati with
a closed fist, singeing her nose hairs, as she made her way into the basement. A yellow neon sign that read nadia's nubian salon hung on the wall of the landing, led the way for customers who entered through the back door. Not that Mimi ever came that way. She insisted on coming through the front. As soon as she crossed the threshold, her eyes roamed as her gloved hands ...
To what audience would you recommend Happy Land? Is there another book or author you feel has a similar theme or style?
...ust a few other historical fiction books I recommend (aside from Take My Hand by the same author): Where the Wildflowers Grow by Terah Shelton Harris The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams Blood Sisters and The Bone Thief by Vanessa Lillie All That We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
-Janie-Hickok-Siess
How does generational trauma flow through a family? What does it take to placate the ghosts who suffered that trauma and to move past the crimes that caused it? In her new novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree, Nikesha Elise Williams untangles these questions through the stories of seven generations of Black women, creating a braided tale spanning more than two centuries and reaching from Alabama to Illinois and back. The novel requires a little patience to push through the veil of secrets and find out what really happened to these women. But the reader is richly rewarded with a moving tale of resilience that also captures the wounds, wrongs, and mistakes that make up the story of a family...continued
Full Review
(708 words)
(Reviewed by Rose Rankin).
Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of City of Girls
Nikesha Elise Williams is a writer of transcendent, vivid power. The Seven Daughters of Dupree is a novel of unflinching honesty and explosive secrets — and the galloping, haunting prose captures not only the heartbreak of oppression, but also the breathtaking moral beauty of resilience, honesty, and the soul's endurance. I admire this book deeply, and it deserves to be not only read, but celebrated. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Oh, how I have been waiting for this novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree—waiting for such a gathering of women, family, resilience, and love! What an astonishing gift from Nikesha Elise Williams, this writer who has come into her glorious own—and what generosity in sharing this gift with us all.In Nikesha Elise Williams's novel The Seven Daughters of Dupree, Gladys, the fifth generation of Dupree women, leaves southern Alabama for Chicago with her new husband, Eugene, in 1953. Eugene worked for the railroad, ferrying passengers between the Midwest and the Deep South but also carrying news of northern cities that offered freedom from oppressive Jim Crow systems like those Gladys and her family lived with in Lands' End, Alabama.
The movement captured in Williams's novel was part of the Great Migration, in which millions of Black Americans left the South for better social and economic opportunities in northern cities. Chicago was a particularly common destination, and the city's Black population grew by about 500,...
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