My Monticello (2021) by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

My Monticello (2021)

by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Charlottesville, Virginia

Virginia: 3/17

   My Monticello is a collection of a few short stories and the title novella about a near-future break down of authority/government as experienced by a young, Virginia-based African American woman and her white boyfriend and a cluster of neighbors who relocate to Monticello (Thomas Jeffersons' estate) where Da'Naisha muses over the impending end of the world, her pregnancy and the possibility that the father could either be her white boyfriend or black ex-boyfriend, both of whom are with her at Monticello.  She also is concerned about her Grandmother, who is also at Monticello and close to death.   Even taking into account that a novella is short by definition, not much happens here.  There is one trip outside (it goes badly) and a looming showdown with white supremacists that happens off page, after the end of the novella.

  While I'm no stranger to the drama of women being pregnant under difficult circumstances- seemingly about 15% of the entire literary output of English language literature in any given time period, it seemed strange to center a novella on that subject and end it before she gives birth.