My Library’s February 2023 Book Club Pick Of The Month

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Do you know why I like Book Club so much? I can talk about books for an hour, and I read books I wouldn’t pick for myself. Some of the books that end up on my Best of the Month articles are ones I find in Book Club.

And sometimes, Book Club gives me a book that surprises me. It’s how I felt about Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound. I went into the book expecting one thing but found another.

What Is The Story About?

When Laura marries Henry, he buys a farm in the Mississippi Delta and takes her and the children there. They meet the tenants, and one of them is a Black family helping with the crops.

I’m oversimplifying what the story’s about. The book doesn’t follow one person’s point of view but six characters. Each has its story and plot line. It’s a fascinating read filled with parallels with the other characters. I liked it better than I thought I would.

Here’s Why I Got Wary Of The Story At First

When I see a white woman write about the South before or during the Civil Rights movement, I get wary. Most of these stories turn into White Savior stories where the white protagonist learns racism sucks, and saves her newfound Black friends from it. I saw it in The Help. The Secret Life of Bees and Saving CeeCee Honeycutt used little lines here and there to gloss over the racism in the country. None of these stories talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Junior much.

If it’s not White Savior Syndrome, it’s a lazily-written one-liner about the white protagonist hearing the n-word and flinching, realizing how bad racism is. I saw that in Where The Crawdads Sing.

Mudbound, thankfully, didn’t have any of that stuff. Of all the fiction I’ve read set in The South, this story was the most neutral towards it. It didn’t try to change the characters. It told you a story without trying to sanitize the dark parts of American history.

The Author Didn’t Try To Change The Characters’ Viewpoints

Most stories show the protagonist going through a change. Often, you won’t see a happy ending unless the protagonists change.

I can say with confidence none of the characters in Mudbound changed. Laura’s family still thought, “They should know their place.” Their Black tenants thought, “They’re all the same.” They distrusted each other in the beginning, and they still distrusted each other at the end of the story.

People enjoy reading dystopian stories. What’s more dystopian than American history?

What Didn’t Occur To Me Until Book Club Pointed It Out

I mentioned the story uses the point of view of six characters. Half of the characters are Black, and half of them are white. What I didn’t notice until Book Club was the parallels between the six characters.

There are three pairs in the story. There are two mothers, two fathers, and two soldiers. While they have obvious differences, their ambitions are similar.

Henry and Hap, the two fathers, see land ownership as the symbol of one’s worth. Henry achieved the dream but still worked to save for a house for his wife. Hap would do anything to make sure he didn’t owe Henry any more than he had to. He would do anything to make sure he didn’t go back to being a sharecropper.

Henry and Hap were the two most comfortable with the current system. They didn’t share every view, but they didn’t see it changing.

Florence and Laura were our two mothers, and it’s what bonded them together. Laura needed Florence more than she’d ever let on, and I think Florence knew it. They didn’t become friends, but they came out of the story humanizing one another as desperate mothers.

And then there’s Jamie and Ronsel, our two soldiers. They became friends because of the war, but they had different experiences coming home. Ronsel struggled with sacrificing himself for the war effort and coming back to his home country not seeing him as human. Jaime came back and stopped caring about what society thinks about him and did what he wanted, even making friends with a Black man.

The friendship didn’t last long, but of all the characters, Jaime had the biggest change. It wasn’t much, but it showed more than the others.

No Matter The Character, They All Came Together For Their Hatred Of Pappy

Pappy was Henry and Jamie’s father. He was as racist as they come, and he scared most of the characters.

In Book Club, the librarian asked how we felt if Pappy got to tell his story. In the first few drafts, Pappy had a voice, but it got cut in the final draft.

I’m glad we didn’t get to hear Pappy’s voice. I know he’s an obvious villain, and I think his voice would’ve ruined the story.

Is This Book A Good Pick For Book Club?

I worry I didn’t do the book justice. There’s so much to talk about, but I’m afraid of giving the book away. It’s a beautifully written book that doesn’t try to sanitize dark parts of history.

This book would be a great pick if you’re thinking of running Book Club. It makes for an interesting conversation about history. The story itself is fiction, but the issues talked about in the book are real. If nothing else, it’ll make you realize it’s not as long ago as we think it is.

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