My Monticello: Discussion Guide + Resources
About the Book
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.”
United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies with a powerful debut connection from a brilliant and original new voice.
You can purchase your copy of the book here.
About the Author
Born and raised in Virginia, Johnson was an art teacher for 20 years before she published her debut novella, My Monticello, at age 50.
Discussion Questions
1. Each story in My Monticello, along with the novella, takes place in the state of Virginia. How is Virginia a character in this book?
2. How does the author explore the theme of home? Who is permitted to fully claim America as ‘home’?
3. What would you say are some of the other themes in this book?
4. Johnson makes references to recent events related to racial discrimination, violence and climate change. In the novella, she imparts a lot of historical information about Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson. What role does history play in the stories?
Other Resources
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson On Her New Novella, 'My Monticello' 2021 (veranda.com)
"My Monticello" Book Talk with Jocelyn Johnson - YouTube
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson Wrote Her Debut Book At 50, Now Netflix Is Turning It Into A Movie - Essence
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