Memphis — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Tara M. Stringfellow
Published Year: 2022
Publisher: Dial Press
Pages: 252

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter's discovery that she has the power to change her family's legacy.

In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence, seeking refuge at her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass--only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory, and she knows it won't be the last. Longing to become an artist, Joan pours her rage and grief into sketching portraits of the women of North Memphis--including their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who seems to know something about curses.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of voices, Memphis weaves back and forth in time to show how the past and future are forever intertwined. It is only when Joan comes to see herself as a continuation of a long matrilineal tradition--and the women in her family as her guides to healing--that she understands that her life does not have to be defined by vengeance. That the sole weapon she needs is her paintbrush.

Inspired by the author's own family history, Memphis--the Black fairy tale she always wanted to read--explores the complexity of what we pass down, not only in our families, but in our country: police brutality and justice, powerlessness and freedom, fate and forgiveness, doubt and faith, sacrifice and love.

First Impressions

This cover is stunning! It immediately jumped out at me from a list on Goodreads Most Anticipated Books for 2022 that I saw at the beginning of the year. I then read the summary and it became one of my most anticipated books of the year.

What I thought

This story is beautiful and I now want everyone to experience it.

Memphis follows a family of women across multiple timelines and stages of life. We start with Joan who is 10 in 1995 and then we follow her mother Miriam, her aunt August, and her grandmother Hazel. This book is told in 3 parts, though I don’t necessarily understand why being broken up into parts was needed.

The story kicks off with Joan, her sister Myra, and her mother fleeing their abusive father and moving from North Caroline, into Miriam’s childhood home with her sister August. The first part does mostly occur during the 90’s with some flashbacks to Miriam’s youth, such as when she met her husband Jax. You also get to read August’s perspective of the first time she met Jax. In the second part of the book, you start to read Hazel’s youth and how she met her husband.

What I loved about this book is that it’s just the story of a family of strong black women and how they made their lives. The men in the story come and go, but the women always stay and that is powerful.

I don’t always love books that don’t have a point, but something about this one works. Maybe it’s because we get to learn the past that brought the women to who they are by the end. Each woman’s chapter intrigued me and I wanted to know as much about their lives as possible. If I had to choose, I would say Miriam and Joan were my favorite. Their stories were so different but so intertwined that I looked forward to learning more about them in their chapters.

The description of this book says that Stringfellow wrote Memphis as the Black fairytale she always wanted to read. I might describe it more as a folk tale than a fairy tale because it doesn’t have your typical dragons or princesses, but I can definitely picture these stories being told around campfires and dinner tables for years to come.