Wednesday Book Group

In The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, we accompany teenaged Hattie Shepherd on her journey from Georgia to Philadelphia. One of five million African Americans to flee Jim Crow law in the American South in search of economic opportunity in northern cities, Hattie marries and gives birth to 11 children around whom the book’s chapters are woven. The story moves back and forth in time to encompass most of the 20th century while highlighting the important events in the lives of Hattie’s children, who struggle with the lasting effects of Jim Crow and poverty despite the promise of a better life in the north. Novelist Marilynne Robinson describes the book as “a vibrant and compassionate portrait of a family hardened and scattered by circumstance and yet deeply a family. The characters are full of life, mingled thing that it is, and dignified by the writer’s judicious tenderness toward them.”