Book Review: My Monticello

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is a collection of 5 short stories and a novella. Most memorable for me was the first short story “Control Negro” and the last story, a dystopian novella called “My Monticello”.

In “Control Negro” a black professor conducts sociological research on his son from infancy to adulthood to determine whether or not a “perfectly raised” black male can avoid systemic racism. The audio version of this story is read by LeVar Burton. Burton’s forceful reading added emotional punch.

In the apocalyptic novella, “My Monticello”, a female descendant of Sally Hemings, family and neighbors are forced to flee their Virginia neighborhood by white militia. They seek refuge in the tourist museum that was Thomas Jefferson’s hilltop estate, Monticello. Set in the near future, author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson paints a disturbingly plausible picture where a loving and peaceful darkly complected people are driven into hopeless death defying despair. A descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, her grandmother, and their neighbors are forced to confront their plight “…until our shared anguish was almost a song.”