“Memphis” by Tara M Stringfellow
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was glad that I was prompted/reminded about it when it was long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023. Memphis as a city vibrates throughout this very readable novel, the cast of characters though small is helpfully listed with a family tree. This is useful as the story takes the reader back across the years, each chapter titled with a character’s name and the year.
The novel starts in 1995 when Miriam has left her husband and brought her two girls, Joan and Mya, back to the North family home in Memphis where her half-sister August still lives with her son, Derek, a problem boy. There is some bad family history between these parts of the family but that is something Miriam has to put aside as she fears for her life from her abusive Marine husband, Jaxson. Over the course of the book their family history and the good then bad times of Miriam and Jaxson’s marriage are revealed. The main focus of the children is on Joan, the only one who recounts her own chapters. She is always drawing, art becoming ever more important in her life as Miriam’s family settle into the North home; a house built by her father, Myron, for Hazel his wife which they saved up for. A very individualistic house with two wings and a bright yellow door, a feature; the two families living in their own halves but sharing kitchen facilities.
Over the years, the novel spans through to 2003 by which time Joan is 18, and the family has evolved and grown up. Miriam has trained to become a nurse, while August, a hairdresser with a loyal clientele chain smokes her way through the book, when not singing; she has a memorable voice, little heard outside their four walls, a wasted talent, a single mother needing to be at home.
The grandparents story of Hazel and Myron is featured back as far as 1937; it is a story of love at first sight, devotion to each other until Myron who survived WW2 is killed while on duty as Memphis’s first black police detective. Hazel though is surrounded by memories in the house he built which has quaint artistic features in it; Joan’s skill inherited from him.
Outside the family there are a couple of important characters, in particular Miss Dawn, a neighbour who is always there and seemingly helps each generation with advice, encouragement even a bit of maybe witchcraft. Stanley Koplo runs the local shop just down their street. His store has North family history and experiences and he is a true friend to each of the generations. These the two featured neighbours in a locality where together they all look after their own community.
This novel is the story of the North family women. Not only is their art and music integral to their history, so is quiltmaking, gardening and their other skills all of which enhance the storytelling. However over these years Memphis was suffering racial discrimination, gang warfare, poverty and so much more; the author manages to bring this all out in a frank readable way. This book is a good read providing an authentic look at African-American life through the decades before the last century turned with the millennium.
