Mudbound (2008) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Henry McAllan: Farm renter and husband to Laura; almost 50; WWI veteran; the serious type.
• Laura McAllan: Wife to Henry McAllan and mother of two small daughters/farmwife; hardworking; teacher from Memphis prior to marriage.
• Jamie McAllan: Brother of Henry. A war veteran (WWII) who returns home to the farm very unsettled; 29 years old.
• Amanda Leigh: Daughter of Henry and Laura; a quiet and serious type who takes after her father.
• Isabelle: "Bella". Younger daughter of Henry and Laura; demanding, but more fun-loving than her sister; beloved by Laura and Jamie. She was Jamie's favorite.
• Pappy: Father of Jamie and Henry. Was a most unlikeable man: bossy, lazy, a misogynist; bigot. A heavy smoker who was always dressed up, but scared the children and had yellow teeth and fingers; deceased.
• Ronsel Jackson: Negro; WWII veteran, son of sharecroppers
• Fanny: Laura's sister
• Etta: Laura's sister
• Teddy: Laura's affable brother (WWII)
• Eliza: Teddy's wife
• Pearce: Laura's brother (WWII)
• Eboline: Sister of Henry, former Cotton Queen of Greenville; widowed. Also spoiled and nasty.
• Thalia: Sister of Henry, former Cotton Queen of Greenville. Spoiled and snooty.
• Hap Jackson: A light-skinned Negro; Ronsel's father. Part time preacher and tenant farmer on Henry and Laura McAllan's property.
• Florence Jackson: Wife to Hap and mother of Ronsel, Lilly Mae and twin 12-year-old boys. Cleans the McAllan's house and is a granny midwife.
• Carl Atwood: Hillbilly and tenant farmer on Henry and Laura McAllan's property.
• Vera Atwood: Carl's hillbilly wife
• Alma Atwood: Carl and Vera's youngest girl
• Rezl: Ronsel's German lover during WWII.
• Dex Demeese: Owner of Dexter's Diner.
• Orris Stokes: Resident of the Mississippi town where the McAllans reside.
• Doc Turpin: Racist quack doctor in the McAllan's Mississippi town.

Quotes edit see section history

• “We didn't stay in their country long, but I'll always be grateful to those English folks for how they welcomed us. First time in my life I ever felt like a man first and a black man second.”

• “God never gives us a task without giving us the means to see it through. That mama worry come straight from Him, it make it so she can't help but look after that child.”

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• That’s what it is to love someone: to give whatever you can while taking what you must.

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• The truth isn’t so simple. Death may be inevitable, but love is not. Love, you have to choose.

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• Beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that.

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• How I wished sometimes that I could join him in his stark, right-angled world, where everything was either right or wrong and there was no doubt which was which. What unimaginable luxury, never to wrestle with whether or why, never to lie awake nights wondering what if.

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• Sometimes it’s necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it’s the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn’t understand that can go fuck Himself.

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• It would be six years into my marriage before I remembered that cleave has a second meaning, which is “to divide with a blow, as with an axe.”

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• He’d given me all the clues I needed to see the weakness at the core of him, and the darkness. I’d ignored them, preferring to believe the fiction. Jamie had created that fiction, acting the part almost to perfection, but I’d been the one who swallowed it whole. I was to blame, for having fallen in love with a figment.

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• We didn’t stay in their country long, but I’ll always be grateful to those English folks for how they welcomed us. First time in my life I ever felt like a man first and a black man second.

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• So it was that our father was laid to rest in a slave’s grave, in a hurried, graceless ceremony presided over by an accusatory colored preacher, while the woman who meant to kill him looked on, stiff-backed and full of impotent rage that somebody else had beaten her to it.

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• Just like that, my life was overturned. Henry didn’t ask me how I felt about leaving my home of thirty-seven years and moving with his cantankerous father in tow to a hick town in the middle of Mississippi, and I didn’t tell him. This was his territory, as the children and the kitchen and the church were mine, and we were careful not to trespass in each other’s territories. When it was absolutely necessary we did it discreetly, on the furthermost borders.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Greenville
• Mississippi
• Memphis
• Marietta
• Germany
• Tricklebank
• Belzoni
• France
• Tchula
• Europe

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Racism: Describe this theme.
• War

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Hillary Jordan (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Alex Awards (2009)
• Bellwether Prize for Fiction (2006)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Violence and sexuality.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › African American
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Discrimination & Racism
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history