![]() ![]() Weaving an epic from the choices, traumas and betrayals of women into a detailed, multi-generational family story that spans hundreds of years is an ambitious undertaking, and it could fall apart in the hands of a lesser-skilled storyteller. ![]() Ailey’s matrilineal line is from this place, and her ancestors have been rooted in the land since before the founding of the country. The majority of the novel takes place in two locales: “the City,” a thinly disguised Washington, D.C., where Ailey’s parents work and she and her older sisters Lydia and Coco are raised, and a small settlement in Georgia near the Ocoee River once called The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees but now known as the town of Chicasetta. What she will uncover during her coming of age and later as a historian changes the way she and those around her define family, and the way readers think of American history. Ailey sets out to help her family advance by doing things her way, shirking off many of the social, cultural and economic anxieties foisted upon her by others. You must think of your children,” Ailey’s paternal mother Nana, who regularly passes for white and is obsessed with colorism and class, tells her. ![]() ![]() You are very, very brown, so you must find someone much fairer than yourself. “Women push the family forward, Ailey, not backward. ![]()
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