The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Written by Ayana Mathis
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is the debut novel of Brooklyn author Ayana Mathis. It was catapulted to instant bestsellerdom by being chosen as the second selection of the re-launched Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Thousands of people have read it and loved it. It’s been touted as an unsparing story of the Great Migration, the historic move of 6 million blacks from Jim Crow south for a better life in the north, between 1910 and 1970.
I really wanted to like this book. It did have some virtues but basically it was a tedious tale that informed me little about the Great Migration and a lot about how the unhappiness of the mother is visited upon the children. I read the book on audio tape and the narrators’ voices gave the story a vitality I doubt a pages version would have. If I were reading a hard copy of Twelve Tribes, I doubt I would have finished it.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a recipient of the prestigious literary award granted by the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship, Ayana Mathis has more than enough official honors to be considered a competent writer. Competent she is. Her sentences are good—simple and seamless. Occasionally there are the dreamy, poetic ones: “Salo woke in the deepest part of the night when the furrowing, burrowing creatures are quiet in their dens and the night hunters have eaten their fill or given up the chase.”
But good sentences do not a novel make. What the book lacks, in spite of its sometimes feverish praise, is depth of character as well as a narrative arc that makes you breathless to learn what happens next. You want to throttle the characters in Twelve Tribes because they are so unremittingly miserable. The novel would make a wonderful television soap opera, but a rich tale about the Great Migration it is not.
Only occasionally do we get a sense of what the universe outside Hattie’s tiny rented house on Wayne Street in Philadelphia was like. We see no labor unions, no black community, no political agitation—and unlike the South where white men were still threatening black people, we see no racism whatsoever in the book. Most disappointing was that I had hoped the novel would explore what a northern city such as Philadelphia was really like for the displaced black Americans. But Mathis barely describes the city, not its history, or cultural tumult, not its architecture or music.
The story could have taken place anywhere in the world. It ranges over a 50-year period from the mid-1920s (though with no mention of the Harlem Renaissance that was taking place up the coast in New York City) to the 1980s, with stops along the way. Hattie and her 11 children and her granddaughter make up the twelve tribes of the title and their connection to the twelve tribes of the ancient Israelites.
At age 15, Hattie Leonard left Georgia and drove with her husband August to Philadelphia, which they were convinced was the New Jerusalem. They dreamed of high paying jobs and a big house, of racial equality and a community of friends. What they found instead was disappointment and despair. Hattie’s life in Philadelphia became an endless endurance of poverty and unhappiness As everyone said, Hattie “had married the wrong man.” August Leonard was a terrible provider, a womanizer, and a lousy role model.
The only thing he did well was come home and impregnate Hattie, who seemed unable to avoid his night-time charms. Eleven children resulted from this union. With such a large brood, spread out over a lifetime of fertility, there was not enough time or money for Hattie to show her children affection. All she could manage was food and discipline. The tender endearments that other women showered on their children were unknown in Hattie’s house. The overriding emotion of her mothering was anger.
In an early chapter, perhaps the finest in the novel, Hattie endures the painful and senseless death of her infant twins, named Philadelphia and Jubilee, as affirmations of hope. She mourned the babies all her life.
Then, like a collection of short stories, that link but don’t interweave, Mathis tells the stories of Hattie and her grown children. They’re not the kind of progeny you brag about to your friends. One son became a phony preacher, another was a traveling trumpet player struggling with his homosexuality, another a Vietnam vet with severe undiagnosed PTSD.
One girl married a doctor but spent her life trying to make it up to her brother that she was too young to stop the child abuse he endured. One daughter went totally crazy, another might as well have, as she decided to have an affair with the man she had once seen Hattie walking on the street with. Hattie seemed happier with this man than the daughter had ever seen her mother at home.
Mathis is capable of lovely poetry: “rotting jasmine smell of the south”. And insight: “Maybe we only have a finite amount of love to give. We’re born with our portion, and if we love and are not loved enough in return, it’s depleted.” But the misery of each character is so intense, their situations so hopeless, that you feel like the story is beating you over the head with self-pity. Why could none of Hattie’s children find happiness? Many unloved children have done well in life once they grew up. And what was it about Hattie, a fertile woman who could see the pain of childless women, never bring herself to see what harm she was inflicting on her children? Why was every man in the novel a candidate for worst male of the century?
Since no character had any spiritual values, since they all lived on the most basic level of me-first, their lives as subject matter are boring. It was with difficulty that I finished the book. The last chapter, the one supposedly where Hattie as an old woman finds redemption with her granddaughter, was so rushed it had no impact. It was as if Mathis had felt the redemption was a false note, but wrote the scene because she felt everyone (including Oprah Winfrey who loves redemption stories) expected it after all those pages of anger and resentment.
I didn’t like The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, but I’m glad I read it. Any day I can discover a new writer early in her career, especially one who seems to have the talent to become a better writer, is a lucky day. .
Bottom line: Oprah Winfrey has selected many good books in the past. For a complete list of Oprah’s picks see: www.oprah.com/book-list/Oprahs-Book-Club-The-Complete-List.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis; Knopf, (256 pp.) 2012; Random House Audio, 10-1/2 hours, 8 Cd’s; read by Adenrele OJo, Banhi Turpin, Adam Lazarre-White.
Bear Quotes
Written by MariJo Moore
Former Rapid River Magazine poetry editor, MariJo Moore, who is also an author and psychic medium, has published Bear Quotes, the latest entry in her popular “quote” books. “Everything is connected,” Moore believes “and bears are a big part of our ecosystem… bears no more belong in cages than humans.” Using the spirit of Bear, Moore offers readers pointed, sometimes hilarious, spiritual advice.
“What is a Bear’s true purpose of hibernation? “Moore asks. “To visit with ancestors and listen to the music of the spheres.”
“Claw marks can last forever,” she cautions. “Learn to leave painful situations with your dignity intact; do not hold on to what is pulling away.
Not to take ourselves too seriously, she points out, “Scat is just another word for letting go.”
You can order Bear Quotes ($13.95) at your local bookseller or from www.marijomoore.com.
Bear Quotes by MariJo Moore; Renegade Publishing, 2013; (32 pp).