The Book Review Club - Jefferson's Sons

Jefferson's Sons - 
A Founding Father's Secret Children
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Grades 6 - 9

Brubaker Bradley brings to life the story of the four children - Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston - that researchers have, after much prodding, historical research and DNA analysis, acknowledged Thomas Jefferson had with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.

Brubaker Bradley's story begins through the eyes of Beverly Jefferson, the eldest of the four children who survived into adulthood, and follows the story through Madison Jefferson, the middle son, and finally, Peter Fossett, the son of the blacksmith, Joe Fossett, who was sold after Jefferson's death.

It is told from close third from just one character's POV at a time. When Beverly becomes a teenager, Brubaker makes an ingenious transition from his POV to Madison's. So much so, my ten year old exclaimed, "Mama, it's Maddy's story now!" It was like a magic trick that the audience sees but still marvels at. Brubaker Bradley is a pro. I learned a few new tricks.

The story revolves around family. In this particular case, a mother, Sally, who was a slave, yet became, for all intents and purposes, the second wife of Thomas Jefferson after his first wife died. And a father, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote all men were created equal yet kept his own children as slaves. And four children who were the slaves and children of one of the United States' most revered but, as we learn through walking in these children's shoes, hypocritical founding fathers.

Brubaker Bradley spent three years working on this book. It shows. She has taken so much material and blended it so seamlessly. The story is suffused with childhood, slavery, history, philosophy, politics, historical figures. They all come to life.

My youngest daughter and I listened to the audio of this book while in DC and Charlottesville for Spring Break. About halfway through the book, we went to Monticello, Jefferson's home. My daughter's been there before, but it hadn't stuck. This time, though, the home wasn't just one more historical building we walked through. My daughter looked for traces of Hemmings' family members, and Fossetts and Hearns. History wasn't boring. It was alive and had faces. It was so cool. We even listened to a part of the story while sitting on a bench on Mulberry Row, where the slave quarters were at Monticello. Afterwards, when we were listening to Jefferson's Sons again in the car, my daughter said over and over, "oh, yeah", as she remembered the places that were a part of the story. 

This is a book you don't want to miss. The writing is superb. The subject matter begs to be discussed. And the last scene is unforgettable. 

Read it.

There are so many excellent books that have come out for children that take historical facts and weave them into fiction that breathes with life. Another, for slightly younger readers, that embraces an African American wedding tradition, jumping the broom, that is inherently tied to slavery but may actually predate it is Ellen's Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons.

I've never been much of a history fan, until now. Through these two books, I feel as if I've discovered a treasure trove of history that isn't history. It's life. Life that readers can understand, embrace, ponder and cherish.

For more great reads, hop on over to Barrie Summy's site. It's blooming with books!

Instantaneous

Have you ever made pudding the old-fashioned way? I don't mean ancient here. I mean, still packet but with all that stirring.

When I was a kid, I used to beg beg beg my mom to make pudding. This meant, of course, someone had to be in charge of stirring stirring stirring that milk and pudding until it came to a boil. Guess who got that lucky job? Yep, the kid who asked for it.

My arm used to hurt from all of that stirring. Then there was the heat coming off of the burner. And the standing. My God, the standing.

But oh, when that jello was done, the pleasure. To feel it thickening under the turn of my wooden spoon. To smell its rich, yummy goodness. And then to wait ever so impatiently for the refrigerator to finally make that pudding do what is was supposed to do. I could hardly ever wait to finish dinner so I could get my pudding. My hard won pudding.

And then the instant kind came out. And all of that complaining and moaning about having to stir was replaced with a whisk and a few strokes.

The weird thing is, we stopped making pudding.

I'd forgotten all about this until I got together with a writer friend of mine the other day. He's a script editor for Hollywood. Has worked on some of the biggest films of our generation. I could tell you his name, but then he would probably kill  me. So let's just call him, Hollywood. H for short.

I was moaning about how movies are getting so incredibly predictable and boring, and how that has slowly eeked its way into books. You know if X is writing a book, it's going to be a mystery/thriller/drama. Pick a genre. But pick only one. Because all of us in arts and entertainment are getting typecast. Every. Last. One.

H said it's because we've moved into the instantaneous society. I buried my head in my arms and moaned, where will it all end? (and felt very much like my grandmother as I said this).

H mentioned a movie I'd actually seen a few years ago. An "off-Hollywood" production called Idiocracy. It extrapolates present society 500 years or so into the future where the president of the United States is a professional wrestler, you can buy everything at Costco, including degrees, and the average IQ has gone so low, the average Joe of today who gets frozen and wakes up in the future is actually a genius who tries to save mankind from his own stupidity. It is black humor at its blackest, and yet with a thread one can see developing in our present society. Kids and adults attached to computer devices of all sorts all the time. Monies being poured into science that solves hairloss or increases breast-size most "naturally", rather than finding new sources of energy. The arts getting less and less attention as video of all nature takes over. And those video shows getting dumber and dumber with each season.

Where will it all end? (Again, feeling a lot like my grandmother).

And that's just it, Grandma Julie. Does the aging generation begin to feel like progress is not necessarily good, or have we really begun to overturn the technology screw and underturn individual thought and development? Is the future looming before our eyes Idiocracy? I cannnot be that pessimistic, even if I wanted to. Trouble is, I'm more fatalistic. I see us so individualized that we lose our sense of community. That what Thomas Jefferson said - I do not agree with you but I will fight to the death for you to have your opinion - will no longer apply and democracy will go the way of the dinosaurs, as will society (now there's a ya novel just waiting to be written). That we will all be linked in, facebooked and co-joined cybernetically, but forget how to interact in person. There's actually already a book on that - Feed, by M.T. Anderson.

There is the smallest part of me, however, that optimist of my youth, that believes mankind might actually still have some chutzpah lurking somewhere deep down that's going to explode out when the instantaneousness gets to be too much. It's the part that wants to make jello from scratch. That does not want everything immediately, right away, yesterday. The one that likes delayed gratification. And it's there. Just look at the book we all love to hate, Twilight. Delayed gratification cubed.

I hope so very much that part of me is right.

What Happens After...

I have been thinking long and hard about what happens after I finish grad school in writing. What is the expectation? I'm already published, so it's not getting published per se, although I would like to move out of the minor, small press houses and up to the major, bigger houses. Is grad school a surefire method of doing that?

How I wish.

Still, there is a certain level of expectation that grad school will help me figure out how to make my writing better.

So I was kind of surprised to read a rant on MFA writers the other day by an anonymous editor. God knows, we writers have enough paranoia about the world of publication, but now to read that educating ourselves in writing is a waste of time? Yeesh.

As a university educator in an entirely different field, political science, please let me say that I wish, wish, wish, it were required that politicians have a degree in political science, rather than law--as most do--or maybe even both. Perhaps then, they might have a deeper understanding of the history of interaction among nations and how best not to repeat past failures, rather than repeatedly making them.

Clearly, I'm all for educating yourself, which is probably why I'm in a writing MFA program. What I'm not for, and probably what an anonymous editor has against those with MFAs in writing, is attitude. I've had students who believe that just because they sat in my classroom, they had a right to a passing grade. Maybe that's what the anonymous editor has seen, writers who feel that since they have the MFA they deserve to be published.

If only it were that easy. Like any job, writing takes lots of hard work. In my experience so far, getting an MFA in the field means putting in more hours in a shorter time period and thus shortening the time spent figuring out how to write publishable stuff. Do you need an MFA to write? Absolutely not. A person can teach herself any craft. ANY. Thomas Jefferson was a self-taught architect and his home, Monticello, is still standing. But I wouldn't hire an architect today who went only to the school of hard knocks (unless, maybe, he were Thomas Jefferson).

So what does an MFA get you if it's not a pass-go-and-head-straight-for-publication card? A lot of experience in a condensed period of time. It's another option in the learning-the-craft scenario. In the end, it might-like any degree-get you a little more notice from editors and agents (say, 5 seconds instead of 3), but really, it's for me, the writer, not them, the outside world. Unless I figure out how to improve my craft, and then everybody wins. I'm guessing a lot of writers see it this way. I hope more and more will as we continue to educate ourselves. I hope, too, that the anonymous editor runs across some of them and changes her position on MFAs in writing. Education isn't a bad thing. It's what we do with it that measures what we've learned.