Rate: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Synopsis: Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South’s wartime ruin and the promises of Reconstruction. Margaret Walker weaves her own family’s oral history with thirty years’ worth of research and bringing the everyday experiences of slaves to the forefront.
This book is quite different from the other books that I normally review. I tend to lean a little towards fantasy and sci fi. But I was looking through bookstagram and discovered two IG pages that were talking about the 50th anniversary of a book by Margaret Walker called Jubilee. I will admit that I had never heard of it before, so I was intrigued. Let me just tell you I live in Southern Virginia and I have experienced racism several times in my life not only here but also all over the world when I was in the military. There were parts of this book truly infuriated me. But there were also parts of this book that made me look at myself, my life, as well as my faith.
I went through these range of emotions and that is mostly because Jubilee was just so beautifully written. Walker takes you through about 30 years of the life of Vyry Dutton with such feeling in the words that I felt as if I was watching a movie before my very eyes. The scenery, the language, the details of her life made me feel so protective of Vyry. By being the child of a slave and her master, she was looked down on by not only the owners of her home but from the slaves themselves. There were excerpts in this book about racism that are still very much alive today. Considering this book is written about the mid to late 1800’s and was written 50 years ago it’s amazing to see just how relevant the issues within this book still are. I think that everyone should read this book especially if you are African American. To be able to read these words and see how far we have come and to see also just how far we must go is something we should all be working towards.
Nikki 🐛
Nikki the Bookworm 