Book #89: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Book #89: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

June 1, 2014


This book is an example of how a random library pick can sometimes go right. This book mainly stood out to me on the shelves because there were multiple copies. I grappled over the "Oprah's Book Club 2.0" sticker. Some people poke fun at her book club choices, but I think she's got a taste for literature. When she skews more towards the inspirational, Mitch Albom-esque works, I steer clear. But Oprah often picks books that are real and dark and show the gritty side of American life, and of course many works that show a black perspective. This book is definitely the latter, the story of one big family struggling to make lives for themselves.

Hattie has a dark past. She comes from Georgia, where she was well-educated and her father was successful. But he was murdered by white competitors, and Hattie, her sisters, and their mother, like so many others at the time, fled north to seek a life free of discrimination and hardship. Well, Hattie immediately saw the difference in the way black people were treated on the streets of Philadelphia than in the streets if Atlanta, but she certainly did not leave hardship behind her. She began dating August, a caring but irresponsible young man, and got pregnant and married at 17.

The book is told from various perspectives. Each chapter is named for one or two of Hattie's children (except the last, Sala, who is her granddaughter). They show pieces of the lives of the Shepard family, and of the children as individuals. From the stories, I cannot tell the exact order of Hattie's children, but I have a pretty good guess. The stories are all in chronological order, but the children's ages vary in their individual stories. Here's a brief summary of what I know of each kid's life:

-Philadelphia and Jubilee: Hattie's first children; twins, a boy and a girl. They died in infancy; Hattie was too young and poor and scared to save them. Their deaths traumatized her, and made her fierce in the fight to keep the others alive...so much so that she forgot to show them kindness.
-Floyd: Oldest after the twins, I think. He is a trumpet player. He travels around and has many sexual encounters with women and men, though he realizes that he is gay. It being the 1940s, there's probably not much of a chance that he could live out his fantasy of having a steady male companion. He continues to live at home, when he's not traveling, for some years into his adulthood.
-Cassie: Next oldest, I think. She was grooming for Prom when Six was scalded. She suffers from schizophrenia in her adulthood; her story describes the voices she hears. Her parents have her committed.
-Bell: A pretty girl. She finds out about her mother's affair with Lawrence a year before Hattie takes Ruthie and briefly runs off with him. She later has an affair with Lawrence, to spite her cold mother. When Hattie finds out, they don't talk for years. Bell sleeps around, gets TB, and nearly lets herself die alone. It's her mother who saves her.
-Six: Six was burned by scalding water when he was a child. He became a soltitary, weak, angry boy. He takes his anger out on a weaker boy, Avery, beating him nearly to death when he'd been insulted. This results in Six accompanying the reverend on a southern baptist revival tour. Six is not a believer but he has a gift for preaching. He pursues this as a career, using his "healing powers" to take advantage of women.
-Alice: Closest to Billups, the only witness to his sexual abuse by a man who tutored them as children. This seems to have scarred her worse than Billy himself; she is married to a rich man, insecure in her position, and obsessed with keeping her brother dependent on her.
-Billups: AKA Billy. He wants to put the past behind him and stand alone as a man.
-Ruthie: Lawrence's child. Hattie went back to August when she realized that Lawrence, a gambler, was wven more unreliable than her husband.
-Franklin: I think Franklin is slightly younger than Ruthie...I was not clear on this. He once received a sound thrashing from Hattie for leaving the bathroom window open, letting in ran and warping the floor. He grew up to be a gambler himself...perhaps he is Lawrence's child as well. His wife Sissy left him because if this, and his drinking. His time in Vietnam only helped him to continue his drinking habit. He has a daughter named Lucille.
-Ella: The arrival of Ella forced Hattie to apply for welfare. Her wealthy and childless sister (her situation reminds me of Alice, though Alice's childlessness is a choice) adopts Ella and takes her to Georgia.
-Sala: Cassie's daughter who is angry and confused about her mother's mental illness and absence. Hattie attempts to give her the affection that she couldn't give her nine sieving children.

Hattie always struggles to do her best, and she has everything against her. This story could have been just as good if it were written in a more "conventional" style, but I think the pieces that each story gives tells the story of this family's struggles well enough. Oprah may be full of shit a lot of the time, but she knew what she was doing when she endorsed this book. I concur.