My Monticello: Fiction

It is hard to believe that this jaw dropping and painfully gripping novella is Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s first. Published in 2021 it remains tirelessly poignant and damning. It shows America at its grittiest from an eye witness perspective of the victimized. Johnson’s style presents a fresh vignette driven telling of the black experience and the myth of the model minority. These are the stories you won’t hear on the nightly news. The stories that humanize the people who are demonized as being too ghetto, too black, too progressive, too everything. The master stroke in this collection of stories is the future dystopian timeline that ties past and present and future together with one long racist cord. In the principal story Johnson reminds us that the body keeps the score even through generations. Along with the reminder that there are no happy endings in a world filled with such bigoted cruelty. “My Monticello” is a quick and spirited read that still manages to flesh out characters you love and hate. Johnson’s approach uses efficient timing, frustrating revelations, and just the right amount of space between to let the imagination do its thing. All over a plot that seems eerily to plausible.