Jocelyn Nicole Johnson: My Monticello, 9781787303027, Harvill Secker (Penguin Random House UK), hard copy
 

It is rare that I am so completely blown away by a book uttering “Wow” several times when I finished “My Monticello” by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson.  This debut will stay in my head for some time.  What a powerful, electrifying story, what an incredibly beautiful use of language, a chilling account put into narration what  has been a nightmare of mine ever since the rise of Trump and his administration.  Picture the US in a civil war like state with black neighborhoods burning, brown skinned people driven out and turned away at clinics hunted down by white supremacists, a world in chaos set on fire.  

Da’Naisha, a young black woman manages to escape these violent attacks with some neighbors, her white boyfriend Knox, her frail grandmother MaViolet and her former lover Devin high jacking a bus and driving it through chaos to Monticello, the ancient home of Thomas Jefferson, a museum now  outside  Charlottesville / Virginia.  Naisha worked there as a guide during her semester breaks and subconsciously ended up on this route.  Ironically she is also an acknowledged descendant of Sally Hemings, a black slave with whom Jefferson had several children.  What follows is Naisha’s  moving 19 day  account  of life with a group of people randomly thrown together in survival mode,  escaping with nothing but the shirts on their backs trying to hold out on Monticello  as long as possible in a collapsing state.  5 stars from me!