Review: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

     I was certain that I had reviewed this book around 2010, but that may have been on some other platform from before I was on Goodreads. I remember losing quite a few book reviews on some reading platform that predated it,  almost 20 years ago I think back around then. In any case this is an excellent book. Worth buying if you have any interest in the families of Virginia even free families of color from Virginia because so many of Sally’s children apparently passed into the white community and disappeared, like some of my own family members. The abuse from the press that poor Sally was subjected to at the time by Jefferson’s enemies is terrible to read about, but the empathy and the sympathy the author uses in reconstructing Thomas Jefferson’s life, and his inevitable dilemma around this relationship, really moved me. Coming from a family that revered the possible connection with Sally Hemings, I’ve always been skeptical about the relationship between Sally and Jefferson, because she was a slave and I would always have to tell my mother that ‘Mom this was no romance: Sally was a slave, remember?’  But after reading  Gordon Reed’s book, I have to wonder whether Sally indeed felt more than an obligation in this relationship. Because she had a choice, as the author shows, while she lived in France, even if it did mean leaving her family at the mercy of people across the ocean, she still had an impossible, gut-wrenching choice.  The Hemings family was treated very well at Monticello, but that could have changed, had Sally decided to stay in France, no?

     This image from 1804, apparently the only surviving image from her lifetime, does not show her remarkable beauty.  It also seems not to reflect her son’s description of her as an “Octoroon,” nearly able to pass for white.   My mother has always insisted that we are descended from  Sally Hemings, although with no actual proof, that I have been able to find.  She has also always found the old story of Sally to be a romantic one, while I have always contested her point of view, reminding her that Sally was a slave, and therefore had no choice in the matter of whether to submit to such a relationship.  What I did not realize was that Sally was also both a young and impressionable girl who may indeed have fallen in love with the sensitive and kindly Jefferson, and also a vulnerable girl whose family was at the mercy not only of the master, her master, but also of every overseer and White person, man or woman, at Monticello.  So, yes, it could have been a romance, as mom insisted, but also, still, it would have been one that was born of coercion and backed by the threat of violence to her loved ones, as I reminded her (in not so many words).  This is the tragedy of The Old Dominion’s ‘Peculiar Institution’ which led, in no small part, to my writing both Ann & Anna, and my ongoing historical fantasy WiP Who By Fire, as well as my nonfiction works.

    The story demands to be told not only of the families who were forced to make choices, but also of the Fancies who had no choice.  And of the fathers who lived in anguish because of it, not to mention the mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers, both of blood and of adoption, who tried to care for children wounded by an inhuman system.

Shira

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Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

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