4.0
Generations
By Lucille Clifton & Tracy K. SmithPublisher Description
A moving family biography in which the poet traces her family history back through Jim Crow, the slave trade, and all the way to the women of the Dahomey people in West Africa.
Buffalo, New York. A father’s funeral. Memory.
In Generations, Lucille Clifton’s formidable poetic gift emerges in prose, giving us a memoir of stark and profound beauty. Her story focuses on the lives of the Sayles family: Caroline, “born among the Dahomey people in 1822,” who walked north from New Orleans to Virginia in 1830 when she was eight years old; Lucy, the first black woman to be hanged in Virginia; and Gene, born with a withered arm, the son of a carpetbagger and the author’s grandmother.
Clifton tells us about the life of an African American family through slavery and hard times and beyond, the death of her father and grandmother, but also all the life and love and triumph that came before and remains even now.
Generations is a powerful work of determination and affirmation. “I look at my husband,” Clifton writes, “and my children and I feel the Dahomey women gathering in my bones.”
Buffalo, New York. A father’s funeral. Memory.
In Generations, Lucille Clifton’s formidable poetic gift emerges in prose, giving us a memoir of stark and profound beauty. Her story focuses on the lives of the Sayles family: Caroline, “born among the Dahomey people in 1822,” who walked north from New Orleans to Virginia in 1830 when she was eight years old; Lucy, the first black woman to be hanged in Virginia; and Gene, born with a withered arm, the son of a carpetbagger and the author’s grandmother.
Clifton tells us about the life of an African American family through slavery and hard times and beyond, the death of her father and grandmother, but also all the life and love and triumph that came before and remains even now.
Generations is a powerful work of determination and affirmation. “I look at my husband,” Clifton writes, “and my children and I feel the Dahomey women gathering in my bones.”
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities29 Reviews
4.0
Lea
Created 2 months agoShare
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“Short but very powerful book, in which every sentence is rich in history - of the author's family, of blacks in America, and of slavery. Just from reading these memoirs about the author and her dad and grandmother, you get a glimpse of what happened and the strength of the author and family to endure and grow roots in this country. I would recommend anyone to read this - it is short but packs a punch of much needed oral history of the generations the author's family lived through.”vanyala
Created 4 months agoShare
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natalie 🐝
Created 4 months agoShare
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“I’m actually glad this was such a short book even though you would want more out of a memoir. It kept it from dragging out.
This shows the fragmentation of many black Americans’ ancestry, the role of storytelling, and the pride in history even though not all of it has been clean.
It was still a little difficult to keep track of who was who, since there were so many different paths of lineages. But this was Clifton trying to explain her world to others, and in doing so, she explains some of the soul of America.”
Danh
Created 4 months agoShare
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jenfrantz
Created 5 months agoShare
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About Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) was an American poet known for her work focusing on the African American experience and family life. Winner of the National Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Clifton is the only author to have two books of poetry nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She is best known for her collections Two-Headed Woman, Next, Good Woman, and Quilting. In addition to her several poetry collections, Clifton also wrote numerous books for children, including her Everett Anderson series.
Tracy K. Smith is a writer and former United States Poet Laureate. The author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, and four poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, she is a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Tracy K. Smith is a writer and former United States Poet Laureate. The author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, and four poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, she is a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Other books by Lucille Clifton
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