The Revisioners
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, 2019
Counterpoint Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781640092587
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1982 (?)
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth; J.D., University of California-Berkeley
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
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 (2017), 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. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A] stunning new novel…. Song lyrics, prayers, chants and Scripture are used liberally to situate the characters in time, but also to bind them to one another through a shared culture.… Today’s readers will find the novel’s most visceral moments of cruelty all too familiar: white Americans dismantling any pretense of civility, taking out their own great pain on a black body. But the… novel is about the women, the mothers.… The Revisioners also reminds us that… there are also connections… that turn a collection of individuals into a community, and will forever be more significant than any bond that’s merely skin deep.
Stephanie Powell Watts - New York Times Book Review
[Sexton's] subtle portrayal of a black mother’s competing desires is layered with both pathos and wit…. We hear from her as an enslaved child in 1855 and as a successful businesswoman in 1924.… Each of these episodes is shattered by violence, yes, but also leavened by varying degrees of progress, despite the persistence of white people convinced of their superiority, innocence and benevolence. The result is a novel marked by acts of cruelty but not, ultimately, overwhelmed by them.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Few capture the literary world’s attention with their debut like this author did; her first novel, A Kind of Freedom, was nominated for the National Book Award and earned several other top accolades. Her anticipated follow-up offers a bracing window into Southern life and tensions, alternating between two women’s stories—set nearly 100 years apart.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] sweeping novel…. Sexton’s characters gain strength by finding one another across the generations.
New Yorker
The fragility fashioned by the sacrifices of Black bodies is confronted in this smart and spooky novel.
Essence
A powerful tale of racial tensions across generations.
People
Wilkerson crafts a necessary narrative on motherhood, race and freedom. (A Must Read Book of the Year)
Time
In this incantatory novel by the author of A Kind of Freedom, a biracial New Orleans woman grapples with prejudice by excavating the story of a female ancestor who endured the roil between slavery and the Jazz Age.
Oprah Magazine,
(Starred review) [An] excellent story of a New Orleans family’s ascent from slavery to freedom…. A chilling plot twist reveals the insidious racial divide that stretches through the generations, but it’s the larger message that’s so timely… powerful and full of hope.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [W]ell-crafted…. The dynamics of a brutal past… is core here, but the narrative… [acknowledges] that the past is not completely past…. Two fearless women separated by time but both dealing with white women’s racism.
Library Journal
It's rare for dual narratives to be equally compelling, and Sexton achieves this while illustrating the impact of slavery long after its formal end.… Readers will engage fully in this compelling story of African American women who have power in a culture that attempts to dismantle it.
Booklist
(Starred review) This second novel from Sexton confirms the storytelling gifts she displayed in her lushly readable debut, A Kind of Freedom…. At the intriguing crossroads of the seen and the unseen lies a weave among five generations of women
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE REVISIONERS … then take off on your own:
1. The Revisioners is structured as different narratives, each featuring a woman trying to free herself from some kind of crisis. What are the nature of these crises, and what, if anything, do they have in common?
2. Mothers are prominent in all three narratives. What role do they play in each section? Taken all together, what central role do they play that ties all three sections together?
3. In the third narrative, the earliest in time, we are introduced to secret meetings held by slaves who call themselves the Revisioners. What does it mean to "revision," and how does revisioning become a connecting link throughout the novel (thus the title)?
4. Why is spiritual knowledge and practice so vitally important to the mothers throughout the novel?
5. Talk about Ava's experience as the only African American in her school. How does she use the imaginary "white light" to encase herself? Where does she think the white light might come from?
6. The novel recounts acts of racism: in what way does the present echo the past? To what degree has racism abated today? Or has it? Has it merely changed its appearance and modus operandi?
7. Does The Revisioners leave any hope for us today or, more important, for future generations?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)