Name: Memphis
Rating: 3.961538461538462 (26 reviews)
ISBN: 9781529339239

Tara M Stringfellow

Memphis

Lindsay

Alex Goodwin

Miriam lifted her dark brown eyes from her novel and fixed them on the stranger in front of her. Miriam—who had only ever regarded men as inevitable oddities and annoyances, nothing more than mosquito bites in the summer, moths that made their way into chests in the winter months, the dust that settled atop books—Miriam, ever indifferent to the wiles of men, fell in utter, marrow- boiling love the moment her doe eyes locked with those of the young man in front of her.

August exhaled a thin stream of smoke. She shook her head back and forth and said, “Men and death. Men and death. How on earth y'all run the world when all y'all have ever done is kill each other?”

Tara M. Stringfellow

"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory, and given who lives inside this house now, she knows it won't be the last. When her aunt opens the door, Joan sees the cousin who once brutally assaulted her. Over the next few years, she is determined not just to survive, but to find something to dream for. Longing to become an artist, she pours her rage and grief into sketching portraits of the women in her life--including old Miss Dawn from down the street, who seems to know something about curses"--

A Novel

oh my god, the trauma. I read this book as a part of my reading road trip. I figured, what better place to start than my hometown? I was not prepared for the immense pain the characters would go through in these pages. If not for the reading challenge, I may have stopped reading this altogether for that reason. However, pushing past that, the book was still enjoyable, fast-paced, and well-written. The prose was very beautiful. I enjoyed the rotating perspectives but still felt like I didn't get to actually know Joan as much as I thought I would be based on the blurb. The southern imagery made me miss home so much. 

Liyah 🤎

Shohini Gupta

loved the interweaving timelines and just vivid, wonderful, deep characters highlighting and honoring a multitude of Black life with such an iconic city as a backdrop 

i loved reading about this loving family living in the city i’ve always called home. despite all the hardships that these women face they stick together and show each other love. i liked the multiple povs and how that let me get to know each character a little better.

darby

Rebecca De Mulder

A stunning debut - very excited to read more by Stringfellow. She embodies the word storyteller in its purest form.

A gorgeous and mesmerizing story of mothers and daughters, love and loss, joy and anger. I fell in love with Memphis and the four strong women leading this story. This debut had some of the most beautiful writing I’ve had the pleasure of reading and I can’t wait to see what the author does next!

Seher Mohsin

"As my mother helped undress me with a gentleness that only increased my fear, I understood then why the first sin on this earth had been a murder. Among kin."

Thank you, NetGalley and John Murray Press for the chance to read and review Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow!

Memphis is an absolutely wonderful book! It's the story of 4 women and how they work to protect each other and their families from the violence that is never too far from their home.

The story starts with Miriam moving back to her home in Memphis to live with her sister, August, and her son, in their mother Hazel's old home, after Jax, her army husband takes his anger out on her in front of their children. It's early on that we realize that Joan (Miriam's older daughter) was assaulted by her cousin at the age of 3. While action was taken then, they're all living under the same roof which doesn't make things any easier on Joan and her little sister My.

Honestly, one wouldn't be able to tell that this was a debut novel. Tara M. Stringfellow put together a beautiful book on how complicated family can be. This is not to say that Derek is ever forgiven by his mother or family, he is taken from his family for some time as well, but the entire situation makes you feel really incredibly helpless. As family what do you do? 


Veronica Zarate

Spanning the time period between 1937 & 2003, Memphis is the story of three generations of the North family's women. Moving back & forth through past & present, Memphis depicts how, though their experiences are years apart, these women's lives are not so different. The obstacles they must face are created through similar tragedies, social or political constructs, or domestic pressures. From the eldest, Hazel, suddenly providing a hub for civil rights organizations, to her daughters Miriam & August struggling to live up to the futures they dreamt of, to Miriam's daughters Joan & Mya, still - in 2003 - trying to pull their family toward a future of happiness & success. Memphis tells of their experiences dealing with racial tensions, domestic & sexual abuse, societal obstacles that make them work twice as hard to live a comfortable life, and their use of community & personal strength to rise from the tensions and push forward. Memphis paints a vivid picture of the pain felt while living in the South as a member of the black community: the pain of giving everything they had to fight racial tensions decades ago and yet their families are still dealing with the repercussions & lack of change even today.

Memphis was a wonderful read, beautifully written & full of beautiful, strong female characters. Each woman's story was unique with the writing changing to depict their individuality - each woman with her own voice, each female experience as significant as the last. While reading, I felt the love and the hope so ardently that the disappointment was felt twice as much when the inevitable ups and downs continued. There were numerous passages that I highlighted where the description, metaphor, or revelation was written so masterfully that I read it twice or three times over to prolong the immersion that our author created. 

Memphis is the story of barriers, heartbreak, pain, and their perpetual hold on a community struggling for change - a struggle that continues from generation to generation as they work to support those who can finally break the cycle. 

Please note: this review is based on an advanced copy received from NetGalley and The Dial Press

READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy. “I fell in love with this family, from Joan’s fierce heart to her grandmother Hazel’s determined resilience. Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Oprah Daily, Essence, Glamour, Business Insider, Marie Claire, The Millions, She Reads, Book Riot, Bad Form Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush. Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

Memphis

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