All Aunt Hagar's Children

Stories

416 pages

English language

Published Aug. 28, 2007 by Amistad.

ISBN:
9780060557577

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4 stars (1 review)

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than everReturning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them.In the title story, in which Jones …

12 editions

Great Character Work With a Deep Sense of Time and Place

4 stars

(Reviewed together with the companion volume Lost in the City)

What struck me the most about these books were Jones' ability to write believably and memorably across different ages, genders, classes and time periods. His characters are only united by race and place, but they have distinct yet harmonious voices.

Jones gives very specific, granular detail for where in Washington DC his stories happen, down to frequently giving intersections and street addresses, and as someone who knows and loves the city, it added an extra layer to me to imagine the stories happening in specific places I'd been and could visualize. I don't know if this would add anything for non-residents, but it worked for me. Refreshing to book about DC that rarely mentioned the Capitol or the Monuments or the Smithsonian.

Favorite story from this collection: The Root Worker