000			02226n a2200265 a 4500
001			062128
005			20231009193127.0
008			130402s2012 nyu 000 1 eng
010			_a2012010779
020			_a9780385350280
042			_apcc
050	0	0	_aPS3613.A82847 _bT76 2012
082	0	0	_aFIC MAT
100	1		_aMathis, Ayana
245	1	4	_aThe twelve tribes of Hattie _c/ by Ayana Mathis.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York _b: Alfred A. Knopf _c, 2012.
300			_a243 p. _c; 25 cm.
520			_aMathis's remarkable debut traces the life of Hattie Shepherd through the eyes of her offspring, depicting a family whose members are distant, fiercely proud, and desperate for connection with their mother. When 16-year-old Hattie's newborn twins, her first with husband August, die from pneumonia in the winter of 1925, it is a devastation that will disfigure her for the rest of her life. As the novel moves from closeted musician Floyd's fearful attempt to love another man in 1948, to Six's flight to Alabama two years later after beating a boy nearly to death, Alice's rift with her brother Billups in the late 1960s, consumptive Bell's aborted suicide in 1975, and Cassie's descent into schizophrenia in the early 1980s, what ties these lives together is a longing for tenderness from the mother they call the General. Strong, angry Hattie despairs as August, an ineffectual though affectionate father, reveals himself to be a womanizer who is incapable of supporting the family. Hattie finds happiness with Lawrence, a gambler; after having his baby, Hattie leaves August and her other children and goes with Lawrence to Baltimore, but returns to the house on Wayne Street, in Philadelphia, almost immediately. Sick with longing for her dead twins and all that her children will never have, Hattie retreats into coldness. As her children age, they come to terms with their intense need for and resentment of the mother who kept them alive but starved their hearts, while Hattie faces a choice between anger and peace.
650			_aAfrican American women _v--Fiction
651		4	_aPhiladelphia (Pa.) _v--Fiction
655			_aDomestic fiction
655		7	_aHistorical fiction
942			_cMO
999			_c261220 _d261220