Hattie Shepherd is just 16 in when she moves to Philadelphia from rural Georgia in 1923 as part of the Great Migration. The central character of Ayana Mathis’ brilliant first novel The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is full of the optimism of youth and vows to stay in the North where black girls walk down the street, “giggling and easy, the way only white girls walked and talked in the city streets of Georgia.”

The novel, which is an Oprah Book Club 2.0 pick, is broken into chapters dedicated to each  member of Hattie’s tribe--eleven children and a grandchild. The first chapter, “Philadelphia and Jubilee” is named after Hattie’s first two children—twins with hopeful names born in the promise of the North. A bitter Philadelphia winter sickens the babies when they are only months old. Hattie, an inexperienced mother of 17 desperately fights for their lives. “She rocked them. She pressed her cheeks to the tops of their heads. Oh, their velvet skin! She felt their deaths like a ripping in her body.” The scene, written in Mathis’ clear, emotional prose, sets the tone for the rest of the  book.

As the book moves through the decades Hattie’s life disappointments mount. Despite her best efforts, the family remains desperately poor. Her husband, while a loving father, is a womanizer who spends his nights away from home. Hattie’s eleven children and their varying issues threaten to overwhelm her, but flinty steeliness and pride get her through. It is that same resolve however, that makes her children feel unloved and contributes to her family’s problems.

At the end of the novel, Hattie reflects on her life recognizing that she has been a cold mother to her children, but also acknowledging she had more pressing problems, like putting food on the table.  “She had failed them in vital ways, but what good would it have done to spend the days hugging and kissing if there hadn’t been anything to put in their bellies? They didn’t understand all the love she had was taken up with feeding them and preparing them to meet the world: the world would not love them, the world would not be kind.”

We see Hattie change and harden over the years beginning with the deaths of her babies in 1925.  Through it all however, she perseveres the best way she knows how for the sake of her children. The final chapter, set in 1980, finds Hattie as a 71-year-old woman faced with a choice that might be her last chance to make her family whole.

Mathis’ first novel is an unvarnished look at the complexities of race, poverty, family and motherhood that calls to mind the great works of authors like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.

Meet Ayana Mathis at the Baltimore Times Literary Festival on March 9, at the Enoch Pratt Library.

The Middlesteins is an incredibly vibrant story that explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love through the lens of an average family just trying to get things right, all the while addressing the tough subject of our culture’s devastating and fascinating preoccupation with food. Told with subtle humor and passion, it isalso a story of fear, love, commitment, blame and hope.In other words, the Middlesteins are a family that live in your neighborhood, a family you might be very familiar with or maybe, just maybe, you could be a Middlestein yourself.

Jami Attenberg, the author of this compelling and awesomely written story, somehow manages through creative prose, passion and prowess, to tell a tale that needs to be told. A tale that is at once sad but then makes you laugh out loud, then cry and cringe in recognition. The Middlesteins is the kind of book that makes you want o read more after its done.

Edie and Richard Middlestein were married for over thirty years and had a solid family, two children, a nice house, good jobs and great friends. Edie’s obsession with food, especially Chinese food, splits the family apart and sends her husband running for the hills. He can no longer cope as Edie continues to expand horizontally.

Will Edie eat herself to death? Robin, the daughter, wants her father to pay for abandoning the family in their time of distress. Richard, the pot-smoking son, wants things to go back where they used to be when his mother was only 210 pounds.

Rachelle. the daughter-in-law wants to save the family, but this task proves much more complicated and a lot more emotionally draining than planning her twins’ extravagant b’nai mitzvah party. Through it all, the family ponders: do Edie’s disturbing choices rest on her own shoulders or are they at fault, too?

“I was always interested in writing a story about a family in turmoil,” says Attenberg, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University.

Attenberg now resides in New York. “

This is a step forward for me,” she continues. “I usually write about male/female relationships – not romance necessarily, but about marriages falling apart. The Middlesteins took me further along because I was able to bring other issues I care about to the forefront. Issues like health, family relationships and obsession.” The book is all fiction, says Attenberg, although she did reveal that once she started writing, she felt that she knew the family somehow.

This is the author’s fourth book to date and she is currently working on her fifth. It’s a much slower process at this time because a great deal of her time is spent traveling in order to read and discuss her work. “I never know how people will react to my work, but I find as I speak at various places and I discuss my story, how often I strike a nerve.” “It is my hope that people will learn to communicate more about the issues of health and bring it to light – especially where their families are concerned,” says the author. Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television and urban life for The New York Times, The Awl, and The Huffington Post.

Her debut collection of stories, Instant Love, was published in 2006. She is also the author of two novels, The Kept Man and The Melting Season. 

Attenberg started writing as a child. “It is what made me the happiest,” she confides. “But I really started taking my writing seriously in my thirties.” These days she writes in the mornings because “this time is my own.” She writes an average of 1000 words per day, five days per week. “I was very focused writing The Middlesteins and was done with the first draft in six months. My entire focus is my writing. It’s what I do,” she says. The pride in her voice is evident. “I knew who the Middlesteins were in my head. So when it came time to write their story, I was just reporting.” She adds, “Being a writer is not just about writing. It’s also about interviews, traveling, reading and interacting with all different kinds of people. “I’m involved in something much bigger than myself.”    The Middlesteins reinforces Jami Attenberg’s place on the literary map and leaves her readers hungry for more.

“Michael wanted his music to speak for him and transcend all the misconceptions. This book addresses everything and says the things he never got a chance to say.”

—Jermaine Jackson

Jermaine Jackson offers a keenly observed memoir tracing his younger brother’s life starting from their shared childhood and extending through the “Jackson 5” years, Michael’s phenomenal solo career, his loves, his suffering, and his tragic end.

 Book Review: “Cheers! To Your Success: Removing Fear From Your Vocabulary So You Can Walk Into Your Destiny,” by Carol Sankar

What is success? How does one acquire success? These are the questions Carol Sankar wanted to find out from people of everyday life. With the state of the economy and the jobless rate at an all time high, Sankar wanted to speak to people who are taking their lives into their own hands despite the many challenges that they face.