Through the summer, I read the 1966 classic novel Jubilee by Mississippi writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998). I chose it because I love the idea of having one novel in my stacks that stretches out for the whole summer.

Inspired by the life of her great-grandmother, Walker takes readers across decades of American history, through eras of slavery, civil war, and reconstruction: 1835-1870. Walker worked on it for thirty years.

Vyry is just a child when the novel opens, and when it ends she’s an adult with children of her own; she is such a credible and multi-faceted character that, even reading this across a few months—a chapter or two every few days, I never had any trouble resettling into her story.

The emphasis remains Vyry and her family, alongside those in her circle (other enslaved people, as well as those in the Big House). But every now and then, a short chapter (usually three pages) situates readers historically. (From the Dred Scott case, to the Battle of Gettysburg, to the Emancipation Proclamation. As a Canadian reader, this was helpful: the events and figures are familiar but not front-of-mind.)

Otherwise, some chapters are very compelling scenes, some take us inside Vyry’s thoughts and ideas, and some contain short descriptions that evoke ordinary events in daily life. Walker is part storyteller and part stylist, and I loved the subtle ways that she marked time and maturity, as with these two passages from Vyry’s perspective.

One from childhood:

“She stood on the hill and watched the sunrise and saw the ribbons of mist hanging over the valley, all over Marse John’s plantation in a sweep of rich, green fields and trees and the land dotted with cabins and houses, barns and other farm buildings as far as her eyes could see. This was her favorite spot in the early morning, but oh, how she wished she were going some place.”

 This from adulthood:

“Standing there in the gray morning she looked around her as the fog lifted. She looked far beyond the other hills of Troy shrouded, too, in mist. She watched the sun rising, only a thin streak of blood pencilling the sky, and in the midst of the sounds and sights of a new day dawning she gave a deep sigh. She was breathing out her heaviness upon the morning, but it would not leave her.”

Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815-1897) began working on her memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in 1853, at the heart of the era in which Walker set her novel Jubilee. Jacobs finished writing it five years later, but it took until 1861 to find a suitable publisher, when the book appeared under the pseudonym of Linda Brent.

The story behind the story is fascinating, too. Not only the positioning of her memoir in the context of other memoirs about enslaved life (her brother would write his own memoir about his escape from slavery, and publish it just a few months later), but also interactions with other writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe (disappointing) and Lydia Marie Child (encouraging). And, many years later, attacks on her authorship and proof that she did, indeed, tell her own story.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl begins when Linda/Harriet is a young girl, too. Just as Vryr doesn’t truly understand the dimensions of her life when she is a girl, Linda/Harriet is “born a slave” but “never knew it”, not until “six years of happy childhood had passed away”. She looks back to her grandmother’s life, just as Walker, too, looks back.

Linda/Harriet also occasionally situates readers directly in a specific historic event, as with the Nat Turner rebellion. She and other household members were targeted as part of the tension surrounding that act of resistance, and it’s instructive to see how she describes the dynamics between those with more and less privilege, those with more and less power. (i.e. some white people use the events to justify extreme brutality and persecution; some white people respond to requests for protection and support).

But there are many passages in which Linda/Harriet simply muses on her everyday surroundings: this one stood out for obvious reasons.

“Autumn came, with a pleasant abatement of heat. My eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, and by holding my book or work in a certain position near the aperture I contrived to read and sew. That was a great relief to the tedious monotony of my life.”

Reading either Margaret Walker’s Jubilee or Harriet Ann Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl would be rewarding: reading them together is doubly so.

Liz is  hosting this week of Non-Fiction November: here’s her post!