We'll be discussing Ayanna Mathis’ Twelve Tribes of Hattie on Tuesday November 19th, the story of Hattie Shepherd, who comes north with her family in the
early 1920s, and raises her 12 children in Philadelphia. Each chapter
focuses on a different member of Hattie’s family: the children , but
also her sisters, granddaughter, husband, and Hattie herself. Through
Hattie’s story we see the effect of one family’s great migration across
eight decades.
Here’s a teaser: Hattie’s first afternoon outside the South…
“A
Negro woman approached the cart…The white man stood -- he did not
hesitate, his body didn’t contort into a posture of menace. As the woman
with the flowers took her change…she upset three of the flower
arrangements….Hattie stiffened, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
She waited for the other Negroes to step back and away from the object
of the violence that was surely coming. She waited for the moment in
which she would have to shield her eyes from the woman and whatever
horror would ensue. The vendor stooped to pick up the mess. The Negro
woman gestured apologetically…In a couple of minutes all was settled…
Hattie
looked more closely at the crowd on the sidewalk. The Negroes did not
step into the gutters to let whites pass…Four Negro girls walked by,
teenagers like Hattie, chatting to one another. Just girls in
conversation, gigging and easy the way only white girls walked and
talked in the city streets of Georgia…”Mama”, Hattie said, “I’ll never
go back. Never”.
See you on November 19th!
