According to the
brief bio in my copy of The Known World
by Edward P. Jones, he won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award and was a
finalist for the National Book Award for his debut collection of short stories,
Lost in the City. Jones won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the National Book
Award for Known World. He resides in Washington, D.C., and this is
his first novel. I am profoundly sorry
this beautifully written work escaped my notice for so long.
This poignant tale
of slave holders and slaves in Virginia takes place in the decades before the
Civil War. The head of the family was
Augustus, who was a skilled carpenter; he and his wife Mildred had a son Henry. Augustus’ owner allowed him to keep a portion
of his wages, and he saved enough to buy his freedom, that of his wife, and
later, Henry. Caldonia Townsend was
Henry’s wife. All of these people were
African-Americans.
Jones describes the
day Henry died, “A few women had cried, remembering the way Henry smiled or how
he would join them in singing or thinking that the death of anyone, good or
bad, master or not, cut down one more tree in the life of the forest that
shielded them from their own death; but most said or did nothing. Their world had changed but they could not
yet understand how. A black man had
owned them, a strange thing for many in that world, and now he was dead, maybe
a white man would buy them, which was not as strange. No matter what, though, the sun would come up
on them tomorrow, followed by the moon, than dogs would chase their own tails
and the sky would remain just out of reach” (60-61). I read, re-read, and read again this and
numerous other passages which brought tears to my eyes. A must read.
I had heard of the
complicity of rival African tribes capturing enemies and selling them to the
slave traders, and I dismissed stories of African-Americans owning slaves. However, Jones’ meticulously researched novel
reveals much of the details of slavery at that time. Henry was not able to buy slaves on the
market, but he used his former owner as a straw purchaser of slaves.
Other characters
included William and Ethel Robbins, white slave holders of 113 people, who
owned Augustus and his family. Then we
have suspicious cousins from North Carolina, who railed against the freedoms
some of the slaves enjoyed in the fictional Manchester County, Virginia. Then we read of speculators, who would buy
blacks, with assurances no harm would come to them, then immediately resell at
a profit without any assurances at all. Then
the white sheriff, along with patrollers, who kept an eye on the movement of
slaves around the plantation where they lived and worked. However, not all these characters are what
they seem to be, and several undergo rather startling changes.
The horrors of the
Holocaust, numerous instances of genocide of millions around the world, and the
slave trade all speak of the incomprehensible cruelty among humans. The insidious slave trade was maintained by
wealthy white people who ruled their “property” with a whip in one hand, a
Bible in the other, and a black woman in their beds. The more I learn of this shameful period in
American and world history the more dispirited I become that we can survive as
an intelligent, kind, and loving species.
What were these people doing owning their own people? The mind boggles to think of what life must
have been like for these poor wretched people.
Readers might know a
lot about the history of the antebellum South, but read The Known World
by Edward P. Jones, and I defy anyone to have a heart so stony not even a
single tear is shed. 5 stars
--Chiron, 10/22/15
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