The enduring love of families and the resilience and strength of black women shines through in Memphis, a dark but richly told debut novel.
Unfolding chapter by chapter, the story is told through the voices of three generations of women of the North family. Hazel is about to give birth to her first daughter when her husband is lynched. Miriam has left left a violent marriage for the sake of her two daughters. August, Miriam’s sister, is refusing to abandon her son who has committed an unforgiveable crime. Joan is fighting to follow her life’s passion.
As the narrative moves effortlessly backwards and forwards in time and history it captures the horrors of racial discrimination, the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War through to 9/11. Memphis tells the devastating impact of these events and how the women living in Tennessee navigate them.
Memphis is a novel ultimately about love and loss. About women falling hopelessly in love at first sight, and the consequences of following that path. Their personal histories will move you from tears to rage to laughter. It is a novel that explores the enduring love that mothers have for their children, no matter their character and what they do. It is the story of sisters, the bond forged in families and how that bond is tested to the uttermost limit. And passion: how, in the right circumstances, it can survive a lifetime, or bittersweet, die.
You will want to immerse yourself in this incredible piece of writing and respond to the injustice, poverty and racial discrimination suffered by so many Black Americans.
Reviewed by Karen Williams
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Poet, former attorney, Northwestern University MFA graduate, and semifinalist for the Fulbright Fellowship, Tara M Stringfellow has written for Collective Unrest, Minerva Rising, Jet Fuel Review, WomensArts Quarterly Journal, and Apogee Journal, among other publications.
After having lived in Okinawa, Ghana, Chicago, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Washington DC, she moved back home to Memphis, where she sits on her porch swing every evening with her hound, Huckleberry, listening to records and chatting with neighbours.
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