The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Mathis traces the fates of Hattie's 12 children and grandchildren over the course of the 20th century, simultaneously capturing the voices and daily minutiae of every one of her characters ... A complex and engrossing work that has huge commercial hit written all over ... Remarkable.

This fresh, powerful first novel turns the lives of Hattie's children into an epic of America in the 20th century. Tough, truthful, wonderfully controlled writing.

Ms. Mathis has a gift for imbuing her characters' stories with an epic dimension that recalls Toni Morrison's writing, and her sense of time and place and family will remind some of Louise Erdrich, but her elastic voice is thoroughly her own - both lyrical and unsparing, meditative and visceral, and capable of giving the reader nearly complete access to her characters' minds and hearts.

A vibrant and compassionate portrait of a family hardened and scattered by circumstance and yet deeply a family. Its language is elegant in its purity and rigor. The characters are full of life, mingled thing that it is, and dignified by the writer's judicious tenderness towards them. This first novel is a work of rare maturity.

Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of GILEAD and Orange Prize-winner of HOME

Beautiful and necessary from the very first sentence. The human lives it renders are on every page lowdown and glorious, fallen and redeemed, and all at the same time. They would be too heartbreaking to follow, in fact, were they not observed in such a generous and artful spirit of hope, in a spirit of mercy, in the spirit of love. A treasure of a novel.

Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of TINKERS

I can't remember when I read anything that moved me quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison.

This is a bold debut that sets out to address the huge themes of motherhood and US history through the tale of one dysfunctional family, and succeeds.

The opening chapter is a cracker, exquisitely written, full of vividly evoked tension and searing emotion. It is painful - relentlessly so - with a devastating coup de grace.

An unexpectedly uplifting reminder of the resilience of the human spirit.

As unremittingly bleak as her characters' lives are, Mathis has not produced a grim novel: it is as much about our need for joy as it is about our struggles against bitterness. Written with elegance and remarkable poise ... memorable and with the hint of something formidable glinting under the surface.

This is an impressive debut: tender, tough and unflinching.

This rich debut couldn't be further from the straightforward 20th-century American family saga it appears at first to be . . . Spanning many decades, it is an intricate portrait not only of complex family ties, but also of one quietly strong woman who heads this complicated tribe of siblings, children and friends. With each chapter narrated by one of Hattie's children, the power of Brooklyn author Ayana Mathis' novel is in its ability to create distinctive yet precise characters brimming with recognisable humanity.

Ayana Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times best seller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and Rolling Stone. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was born in Philadelphia, and currently lives in New York City where she teaches writing in Hunter College's MFA Program.

A NEW EDITION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING NOVEL 
An Oprah's Book Club Pick 
 
'Remarkable' Sunday Times 
 
'Ms. Mathis has a gift for imbuing her characters' stories with an epic dimension that recalls Toni Morrison's writing' New York Times 
 
'Vibrant and compassionate . . . a work of great humanity' Marilynne Robinson 
 
1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a better life. When Hattie marries and gives birth to her children, she raises them with grit and mettle, preparing them for a world that will challenge and wound them. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie tells the story of a mother's monumental courage, the resilience of human spirit and the myth of the American dream.

Ayana Mathis

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extremes of experience intensely to life. This is a fine, powerful book

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between dreams and survivals, between the indifference of the world at large and the passions of individuals

The Unsettled crosses generations and landscapes, digs in the Southern soil and walks mean Northern city streets. Expansive and explosive, this beauty of a novel showcases Ayana Mathis's grace on the page, as writer, as storyteller. A book to be read and re-read

Poignant, heartbreaking . . . Mathis skillfully and subtly drops allusions to historical events, sending the reader on a kind of intellectual treasure hunt

The Unsettled follows Ms. Mathis’s debut, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, whose loosely assembled family vignettes also explored the ambivalent aftermath of the Great Migration north. But this is a far better book, more focused and cohesive, and also more alive

The Unsettled is a powerful, moving novel about the fracture of Black family and the attempts we make to suture it, about the power of our history and futile attempts to sanitize it, about the connection of Black people to the lands they fight so hard to keep, and the government’s attempts to separate them from it

Mathis is back with a highly anticipated and emotionally propulsive follow-up . . . Through a chorus of distinctive and virtuosic voices, we gather the story of a mother, a daughter, and the land that both unites and divides them

‘A powerful book’ Marilynne Robinson 
‘A book to be read and re-read’ Jesmyn Ward 
‘Poetic and fierce’ Yiyun Li 
 
From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia in 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. Estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, and their home in Bonaparte, Alabama, Ava is determined to give her son 
the chance of a better life. 
 
But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, Ava is swept off course by his charisma and his bold vision for racial justice. As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass and the radical group he has created, Toussaint begins to sense the danger and threat of violence simmering all around him. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, but can he find his way there? 
 
The Unsettled is an explosive and vital story of belonging, legacy and survival from one of America’s most talented storytellers. 
 
‘I can’t remember when I read anything that moved me quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison’ Oprah Winfrey on The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

The Unsettled

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Praise for The Unsettled

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**

Books by Ayana Mathis

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Praise for The Unsettled

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...

Deep, rich and huge spirited

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...

Books by Ayana Mathis

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**

Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. **In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extrem ...**

Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. **A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between d ...**