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Summary
Summary
A 2017 National Book Award Nominee
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Chosen as 1 of 12 books to read this August by the Chicago Review of Books
Chosen as 1 of 24 Incredible Books to Add to Your Shelf This Summer by the Huffington Post
Chosen as 1 of 10 Books to Read in August by BBC Culture
"This luminous and assured first novel shines an unflinching, compassionate light on three generations of a black family in New Orleans, emphasizing endurance more than damage." --The New York Times Book Review , Editors' Choice
Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society, and when she falls for no-account Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.
In 1982, Evelyn's daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband's drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.
Jackie's son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn't survive the storm. Fresh out of a four-month stint for drug charges, T.C. decides to start over--until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal.
For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.
Author Notes
Born and raised in New Orleans, MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. She was a recipient of the Lombard Fellowship and spent a year in the Dominican Republic working for a civil rights organization and writing. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom , was long-listed for the National Book Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The New York Times Book Review, Oprah.com, Lenny Letter, The Massachusetts Review, Grey Sparrow Journal , and other publications. She lives in the Bay Area, California, with her family.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Sexton's native New Orleans, this emotionally wrenching, character-rich debut spans three generations in a city deeply impacted by segregation, economic inequality, and racial tensions. It begins with a 1940s romance between Evelyn, the eldest daughter in a relatively well-off Creole family, and Renard, the son of a janitor, whose dreams are bigger than his station in life can hold. Their daughter, Jackie, becomes a mother in the Reagan-era 1980s, struggling through the economic downturn that derails her husband's promising career and starts him on a tumultuous path of addiction and empty promises. Their grandson, T.C., lives through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, watching it transform his city-and himself-into something unfamiliar. Yet when his ambitions falter, he braces himself with the need to be present in his newborn son's life in the way his father never was. Sexton's narrative navigates complex topics with an adroit sensitivity that lends sympathy to each character's realistic, if occasionally self-destructive, motivations. Being able to capture 70 years of New Orleans history and the emotional changes in one family in such a short book is a testament to Sexton's powers of descriptive restraint. In this fine debut, each generation comes with new possibilities and deferred dreams blossoming with the hope that this time, finally, those dreams may come to fruition. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Evelyn, Jackie, and T. C. are complex and authentic generations of a New Orleans family. The novel's title captures reality for all three: free people trying to exercise free will while the webbing of race and class prevents them from finding free opportunity. In the 1940s, Evelyn's family is among the most successful African Americans in town, and her love for Renard, son of a janitor, causes them legitimate concern. In the 1980s, Jackie, Evelyn's daughter and herself a new mom, attempts to reconcile with her husband, Terry, whose crack addiction was born in part by his less-than status among his white peers. In the 2010s, Jackie's son, T. C., is released from prison and must find a way to provide for his own newborn son. Sexton's characters share the traits of kindness and struggle, and her first novel disavows any notion that prejudice is history: perhaps changed in form, it is still passed along with the generations. This novel sparked a competition among literary agents, and for good reason. This family is worth every minute of a reader's time.--Dziuban, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
BLACK DETROIT: A People's History of Self-Determination, by Herb Boyd. (Amistad/HarperCollins, $16.99.) Boyd weaves the lives of standout African-American figures into this history of the city, tracing its evolution from a French trading post to a symbol of decline. From the country's first black auto dealer to Michigan's first black obstetrician, characters who might have otherwise remained on history's sidelines are the heart of Boyd's history. GOODBYE, VITAMIN, by Rachel Khong. (Picador, $16.) In the wake of a breakup, Ruth - 30, adrift and heartbroken - returns home to care for her father, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The novel takes the form of Ruth's diary over that year, resulting in a poignant and even darkly comic exploration of adulthood, relationships and memory. THE WRITTEN WORLD: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization, by Martin Puchner. (Random House, $20.) Puchner, an English professor at Harvard, makes the case for literature's all-importance to societies and the shape of humanity's history. His research has taken him to every continent, in the search for sacred and foundational texts, and spans centuries, from Mesopotamia to Cervantes to Harry Potter. SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE, by Sarah Schmidt. (Grove, $16.) Schmidt revisits the unsolved Fall River murders at the center of Lizzie Borden's life: In Massachusetts in 1892, Lizzie's father and stepmother were hacked to death. Schmidt imagines the lead-up to the grisly crime, and Lizzie's possible madness. Our reviewer, Patrick McGrath, called the novel "a lurid and original work of horror," which evokes "the disintegrating character of this sweltering, unhygienic and claustrophobic household of locked doors and repressed emotions." HUNGER: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay. (Harper Perennial, $16.99.) Reflecting on her life through the lens of her body, Gay engages with questions about desire, nourishment and protection. As Carina Chocano wrote here, the memoir reads like Gay's "victorious, if not frictionless, journey back to herself, back into her body, from the splitting off of trauma. Is the responsibility for her body really hers alone?" THE MISFORTUNE OF MARION PALM, by Emily Culliton (Vintage, $15.95.) In this debut novel, a Brooklyn mother has embezzled a modest amount from her children's private school. When it faces an audit, she leaves her family behind and goes on the lam. As she tries to carve out a new place in the world, Marion turns out to be a delightful antiheroine and defies expectation at every turn.
Kirkus Review
A multigenerational exploration of systemic racism in America.Evelyn is 22 and studying to be a nurse. Her family is well-known in New Orleans' 7th Ward. Her mother is a beautiful Creole woman. Her father's distinctly African features are offset by the fact that he's a doctor. It's 1944, and Evelyn, her family, and her peers are unabashed in their colorism. Evelyn and her sister, Ruby, assess men and other women by the lightness of their skin and the natural straightness of their hair. Among other Negroesthe preferred term in this time and placeEvelyn's appearance and relative wealth shield her from some of the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South. But what privilege she enjoys becomes an impediment when she falls in love with a man with no money and no family. Over the course of the novel, Sexton follows Evelyn, her daughter, Jackie, and her grandson, T.C., as they negotiate the realities of race and class in the United States. Jackie loses her husbandand her solidly middle-class lifeto the crack epidemic of the 1980s. T.C. starts dealing weed after the world he knows is destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Some of the dilemmas these characters face would have beenand will berecognizable to many African-Americans. For example, Evelyn's beau (and, eventually, her husband) doesn't want to risk his life fighting for a country in which he is not a full citizen. And, even though Jackie knows the devastating impact of crack firsthand, she also recognizes that the war on drugs has a disproportionate impact on black people. Some of the nuances are particular to New Orleanswhich has a distinct and complicated history with regard to racebut Sexton's choice of this unique setting is effective, too. There aren't many places in the country where three generations can take an African-American family from life in an established, upper-middle-class enclave to a hand-to-mouth existence in public housing. Sexton's debut novel shows us that hard work does not guarantee success and that progress doesn't always move in a straight line. A well-craftedand altogether timelyfirst novel. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.