Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Counterpoint (November 5, 2019)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
"Sexton takes on [Toni Morrison's artful invocation of the ghost] in her new novel The Revisioners. . . She writes with such a clear sense of place and time that each of these intermingled stories feels essential and dramatic in its own way." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A powerful tale of racial tensions across generations." —People
In 1924, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine’s family.
Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine’s descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays Ava to be her companion. But Martha’s behavior soon becomes erratic, then threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine’s converge.
The Revisioners explores the depths of women’s relationships—powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between mothers and their children, the dangers that upend those bonds. At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.
"[A] stunning new novel . . . Sexton’s writing is clear and uncluttered, the dialogue authentic, with all the cadences of real speech... This is a novel about the women, the mothers." ―New York Times Book Review
Praise for The Revisioners
Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work―Fiction
Winner of the 2020 George Garrett New Writing Award
Long-listed for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize
NBC News, 1 of 40 Best African American Books, According to the NAACP
A Time Must-Read Book of the Year
TODAY, 1 of 5 Books to Read If You Enjoyed "Writers & Lovers" by Lily King
One of O, The Oprah Magazine's Buzziest Books Coming Out This Year
A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick
An Amazon Best Literature & Fiction Book of November 2019
E! News, One of the Best New Books of the Month
The Washington Post, 1 of 10 Books to Read This Month
Kirkus Reviews, 1 of the 12 Best Reads for Your Book Club
Electric Literature, 1 of 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019
Literary Hub, 1 of 10 New Books You Should Read This Week
The Millions, Most Anticipated
Parade, One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall
BuzzFeed, A Buzzy Book Coming Out This Fall
Publishers Weekly, One of the Big Indie Books of the Season
Good Housekeeping, 1 of the 50 Best Books of the Year to Add to Your Reading List
Book Marks, One of the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
Parade, 1 of 8 Books to Fall Into
All Arts, 1 of 10 New Books to Read This Month
PureWow, 1 of the 25 Best Books We Read This Year
PureWow, One of the Best New (and New-ish) Books to Read This Black History Month
Paperback Paris, 1 of 12 New Books You'll Want to Bring Outside This Season
StyleBlueprint, 1 of 6 New Novels to Curl Up with This Season
The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson SextonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This riveting novel, The Revisioners was told in two crucial point of views and in three pivoting time lines that feature two African-American women - Ava and Josephine, who are connected by blood, and whose stories span over 160 years from the 1850’s through 1920’s, and finally in current day New Orleans, 2017.
This is a story of a family that for generations had been penetrated by deeply ingrained racism. This is a timely story that the readers will connect with and the reason why our black communities are still struggling for equality and human rights.
The story begins in current time with Ava as a biracial woman who moves in to her very wealthy white great grandmother’s home to work as her companion - the story wants me to believe just as Ava, that social progress and racism has been overcome in this family despite warnings from her own family.
My favorite was Josephine’s story, which began as an enslaved child in the mid 1800’s. Her story continues as she becomes a successful landowner in the 1920’s. Throughout the story, there were sprinkling of prayers, scriptures and church hymns that add to the setting of life in the south during those times.
The Revisioners was a sweeping and powerful story of how racial tensions spans across generation through the stories of women, their familial relationships, and the ingrained prejudice that seeps through not only in this family but the community that goes beyond skin deep.
I highly recommend this book. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is a brilliant writer that probes into the stories of the privileged to the marginalized, and the fragility of the racial divide that is still palpable in our current times. A timely and relevant story that is a must read.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT:
MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
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