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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" is hard to get through at times, its pacing speeds and slows. But it is always beautiful and leaves you with a strong feeling long after you've finished. I think the world is better off having books like this in it, sharing these stories that need to be read.
Summary: Each of the chapters covers one (or sometimes two) of Hattie’s children. Each chapter is only a small glimpse into their life, but the chapters span decades. The book starts in in 1925 and ends in 1980, spending most of its time in Philadelphia.
The background of the story is the Great Migration of black families fleeing the South. The promise of jobs and a better life brought many black families to northern cities in the early 20th century. Hattie came as part of this movement, moving to Philadelphia at the age of fifteen, getting married, and having babies.
This is almost a collection of short stories. Each chapter takes place in its own world, often over as short of a time period as a few hours, with only passing references to the rest of the family. Memories fill in the gaps, but there’s so much that’s only hinted or altogether unknown. At first this felt disjointed, but over the course of the book, I grew to love the way the plot centered around Hattie without her ever being the main character. The ending chapters were emotionally strong and did a fine job of wrapping such an oddly-shaped gift of a book.
I did find it difficult that so many of the stories are tragic. While I think the end of the book is ultimately positive, it’s not without an underlying sadness. I was always waiting for someone to get a break in this book, and when it occasionally did happen, it was always blunted by harsh realities of their life.
The descriptions are quite good, with both character and space well done. I felt the places they occupied. And the characters have such depth for so little space they are on the page. The chapters really could function as their own flash fiction since the characters get only a few pages to make themselves understood.
As a side note, this is an Oprah book, which means there were highlights from Oprah that I could not turn off in my kindle. I absolutely hated that. But I believe that was the only kindle version I could get.
For book group discussions, this is the perfect book. Motivations are rarely explained, timelines can be a bit difficult to sort out, characters make hard choices out of emotion, with plenty of themes to explore in every chapter. This all would lead to some great discussions.