THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE by AYANA MATHIS

This is a wonderful novel about a family's move from Georgia to Philadelphia, South to the North. AYANA MATHIS helped me keep track of the time in American History by adding the year at the beginning of the chapter. THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE begins in 1925. The novel ends in 1980. It is amazing how many important issues are covered in the novel: marriage, death, child rearing, Mental health, motherhood, family harmony or disunity. Really, I began to understand more deeply all families are really alike in one way. There is the struggle to understand one another with love while each person in the family reaches out for change. I would add change to the list of issues involved in the novel.

Hattie is like a river. Her tributaries, children, branch out and widen. Each branch of the river seems to grapple for away to gain personal strength away from the mother figure. Hattie is portrayed as remote but not hateful. I am use to mothers being portrayed as very good or very bad. Ayana Mathis did the miraculous by making this woman like a friend or aunt I might know. I didn't grow to really like her or know much about her until Cassie and Sala made their entrance. I think Hattie had become less indifferent by the time Sala, her grandchild, entered the world. When I read her name Sala, I kept thinking of the word Selah in the Holy Bible. I decided to look up Cassie's daughter's name. It means"a large or important room or hall; esp : one used in a home for the reception and entertainment of guests sala, dining room — Manila Times.

This definition makes me think Sala will become the change needed in this family. Like a large, wide open room she will gather the family back together again, resew torn patches and dust the areas that haven't been dusted in ages. In the end she is the harmony, the music spoken of by Ayana Mathis. "It is really something to feel music, to feel as though one has become music.....I remember that ecstasy." I think it's the only time where she takes time away from nurturing children to thinking thoughts about all these child-adults in her life. I see her, at this point, as less introverted and more aware that change takes action or patterns are repeated."Here we are sixty years out of Georgia, she thought, a new generation has been born, and there's still the same wounding and the same pain. I can't allow it. She shook her head. I can't allow it."

I felt all the painful crosses of burdens fell on the shoulders of Cassie. Simply because when the mind is sick the whole body is sick. The Banshees drive Cassie away from Sala, her only child. Cassie and Sala were my favorite characters. As Sala  pushes toward her mother, Cassie pulls away because of confusion and anxiety and fear. I thought about how difficult it is to reach out for someone you love knowing you can never reach their soul. It's like a wall as strong and as high as the Wall of Jericho is disallowing you from touching the people you love so much. This is Sala's legacy I suppose.Before she can even begin to dream some force is reaching out to steal her humanity and her true self. However, I don't think Hattie will allow it this time. Hatties thinks "not too old to weather another sacrifice."

For me the story began again with Sala. I wanted to know where she would go in life, how long it would take to leave behind the emotional ties of her mother and what she would despise and love in life. Cassie, Sala's mother, uses better words to describe my thoughts about her daughter. "What I feel for Sala has eclipsed anything I thought was love before she was born; it has made me wonder if I ever loved anything before her. As for Mother, I think that I did love her. I think I still do. That's what I told Sala." These lines make me think Mother and daughter love is far more complicated than the love between a mother and son. This is only a personal guess. However, Ayana Mathis made my mind spin, twirl and fall off its axis thinking of the Psychology behind all types of relationships even alternative lifestyles. I have begun to understand on a deeper level that relationships are what it's all about. Relationships keep us balanced or unbalanced. What better place to begin a primer on relationships than in our families? This is the beginning of all that comes before and what will come after we have long gone to our graves. Our voices whisper relationships. Keep trying. Don't give up. Try and change the pattern because a small family become wide and strong like the roots of a tree. "Though they were small and struggling. Philadelphia and Jubilee were already among those luminous souls, already the beginning of a new nation."nprbooksauthorsayana-mathis