I have been absent from the blogosphere for about a month, but am now back and plan to post regularly.The first order of business to congratulate Annette Gordon Reed on the Pulitzer she won for her latest book The Hemingses of Monticello. The book chronicles the Hemings family from the 1700s in Virginia to 1826, when Thomas Jefferson died at his and the enslaved Hemings family home at Monticello.
I got the book when it first came out last September, not only because of my interest in the life of Sally Hemings, but because of the Hemings family's imprint on the American experience and the intriguing life of Jefferson's chef and former slave James Hemings, brother of Sally. I read Reed's earlier book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy years ago and visited Monticello in 2006 to learn as much as I could about the Hemingses. After hearing about the Pulitzer win on Monday, I plan on finally sitting down with her latest book starting tomorrow.
If you would like to see more of Gordon-Reed, she will be giving the University of Delaware's Department of History's William Watson Harrington Lecture on May 7th. The topic of her lecture will be "The Hemingses of Monticello: Writing the Life of an Enslaved Family" and the event is free and open to the public.
Below is a short list of profiles on Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello:
- The Root's interviews Gordon-Reed in a piece in the Washington Post.
- BookVideo.tv profiles the author her nomination (and later win) for a National Book Award.
- Gordon-Reed speaks to CNN about Jefferson's relevance in today's society, especially in the conversation about present-day piracy.
Comments