This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
The International Bestseller Now a major motion picture from Netflix, directed by Dee Rees, nominated in four categories for the Academy Awards. In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farmâ??a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is notâ??charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still.… (more)
Incredibly moving and well told. Somehow it manages to be both absolutely devastating but also inspiring. Not only do I want to work towards a better future for all people, I have to remember that there is just so much hurt from the past that must be felt and acknowledged so that it can hopefully one day be healed. ( )
Second half is better than the first half, which reminded me of a very tame version of [b:Half-broke Horses|6366437|Half Broke Horses|Jeannette Walls|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348507420s/6366437.jpg|6553801]. (Very tame version.) However, I still felt it was bits of many other books I've read in the past; I can't say it told me a whole lot I hadn't read before. Perhaps the role of African-Americans in WWII, but that's about it. Florence was my favourite character, but she did not get enough "air time." In general, characters were flat or typical; nothing surprising. But why the tongue?
This was our summer reading book the summer before freshman year in 2010 and I'm pretty sure I was one of five people who actually read it. I enjoyed it! ( )
If I could do it, I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth. bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement.... A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.----James Agee, "Let us Now Praise Famous Men"
Dedication
To Mother, Gay and Nana, for the stories
First words
Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep.
Quotations
Last words
If he worked and prayed hard enough. If he was stubborn as well as lucky. If he really had a shine.
The International Bestseller Now a major motion picture from Netflix, directed by Dee Rees, nominated in four categories for the Academy Awards. In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farmâ??a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is notâ??charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
In this award-winning portrait of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town, prejudice takes many forms-some subtle, some ruthless. Mudbound is the saga of the McAllan family, who struggle to survive on a remote ramshackle farm, and the Jacksons, their black sharecroppers. When two sons return from WWII to work the land, the unlikely friendship between these brothers-in-arms-one white, one black-arouses the passions of their neighbors. As the men and women of each family tell their version of events we are drawn into their lives. Striving for love and honor is a brutal time and place, they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale and find reemption where they least expect it. -back of book
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Wikipedia in English (1)
1