Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. Her debut novel explores the intricate dynamics of family and the enduring legacy of African American life. Mathis's prose is noted for its piercing insight and emotional resonance, offering readers a profound glimpse into the human experience.
Hattie Shephard finds that her American dream is shattered time and again: a husband who lies and cheats and nine children raised in a cramped little house that was only ever supposed to be temporary
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.
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In "Bonaparte, Alabama, 1985" kämpft Dutchess Carson um den letzten Grundbesitz ihrer schwarzen Genossenschaft, während ihre Tochter Ava in Philadelphia einer radikalen Kommune folgt. Ihr Sohn Toussaint sehnt sich nach seiner Großmutter. Mathis verknüpft die Schicksale der drei Generationen mit der Black History und thematisiert Erbe, Mutterschaft und Utopien.