The Book Nook

Revisiting America’s Past The Black Lives Matter movement has raised awareness of social disparities, providing opportunities for deeper understanding as experiences are shared and new voices heard.  Looking at history lets us compare old and current attitudes as we work toward a better future for all. “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones is a character-rich novel that looks at life in 19th Century Virginia.  In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the author writes about people on both sides of the issues of slavery, including free blacks who owned slaves. The story is set in the fictional county of Manchester where locals consider William Robbins to be the most powerful man in the region.  A white plantation owner with over 100 slaves, he allows one of them, Augustus Townsend, to purchase his freedom.  Although it takes years, Augustus buys his wife Mildred and then their son Henry from Robbins. The couple are careful to maintain a low profile to avoid being targeted by troublemakers.  Even worse, they could be returned to slavery if they can’t provide written proof of their freedom or kidnapped by unscrupulous men looking to profit by selling free blacks against their will. Owning someone is something they’d never do and are shocked when Henry tells them he’s purchased Moses - a man four years his senior.  Henry sees it as a practical matter and at first he and Moses treat each other as equals until Robbins cautions Henry to establish immediate dominance over Moses. Years later, Moses is now Henry’s overseer and is responsible for keeping the estate running smoothly.  When Henry dies of a mysterious illness his widow inherits everything, including a comfortable home, 50 acres and 33 slaves.  At first all goes well on the property, but problems mount as time passes, affecting all who reside there. Other characters include the county’s sheriff John Skiffington and his family, the men who patrol nightly on the lookout for runaways and a newlywed couple dismayed at receiving a slave as a wedding gift, among others. Having the author’s list of characters at the end of the book was helpful because the story didn’t always proceed chronologically and didn’t center on one individual.  Instead, it was several stories woven together to show how slavery made victims of both blacks and whites while tainting the lives of everyone it touched. In this way Jones explores good and evil not as a whole but within each individual’s consciousness.  The narrator is an unknown omniscient person who doesn’t judge, allowing readers to experience the story without any particular slant.  The characters never feel like stereotypes and are given dimensions that maintain their humanity and provide insight into their actions.  The overall story has an understated and elegant feel.  Also enjoyable was the clean, frugal narration that gained a rhythm as it progressed. Due to a 1660s decree from a Virginia court, children of enslaved women were legally considered slaves and most lived their entire lives in captivity.  Their fate was entirely in someone’s else’s hands and many lived in fear of losing loved ones.  Imagine being permanently separated from your family and not knowing if you’d ever meet again. From earlier interviews I learned that Edward P. Jones had been thinking about his story idea for about ten years and had collected many books on slavery before penning this novel.  To create his characters he relied on his imagination and stories he heard growing up.  His goal was to tell a simple story about complex people who tried their best but weren’t always successful.  Those characters culminated in a tale that won critical acclaim, with some reviewers accurately predicting it would win awards.  In addition to the Pulitzer, it also won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the International Dublin Literary Award. This book reminded me of two similar novels.  One is “The Last Runaway” by Tracy Chevaliar (for a full review see the January 16, 2020 Star News Book Nook article).  The other is the award-winning book by Ta-Nehisi Coates called “The Water Dancer”.  In this story the author turns slaves’ wishes for escape by some mystical means of teleportation into reality. For me “The Known World” clarified this time in history and a search for more information led to finding an American civil rights/anti-slavery timeline located at https://www.ushistory.org/more/timeline.htm.  One observation was that the Homestead Act of 1862 that gave away millions of acres of land was far more beneficial to whites than blacks, and that the westward expansion displaced most native Americans.  Another mentioned that the G.I. Bill of 1944 aimed at providing low-cost mortgages, loans and education to military veterans was designed to all but exclude people of color. Many new books are coming out to address racial injustice and how changes can unite and strengthen our nation.  “The Known World” is a good place to immerse oneself in an ugly and repressive time in American history and learn from the past.