Memphis

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her fathers explosive temper and seek refuge at her mothers ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the familys trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joans grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglassonly to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mothers mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and angerthat the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time,Memphispaints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebratingthe full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

Poet, former attorney, Northwestern University MFA graduate, and semifinalist for the Fulbright Fellowship,Tara M. Stringfellowhas written forCollective Unrest,Minerva Rising,Jet Fuel Review,Women Arts Quarterly Journal, andApogee Journal, among other publications. After having lived in Okinawa, Ghana, Chicago, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Washington, DC, she moved back home to Memphis, where she sits on her porch swing every evening with her hound, Huckleberry, listening to records and chatting with neighbors.

• Publisher:The Dial Press (March 1, 2022)
• Language:English
• Hardcover:272 pages
• ISBN-10:0593230485
• ISBN-13:9780593230480
• Item Weight:1.25 pounds
• Dimensions:6.13 x 0.69 x 9.25 inches