Coleman Hill
Kim Coleman Foote
(Author)
Description
"Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer." --Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Red at the Bone"A masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true . . . This is the American story." ―Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost"Kim Coleman Foote has the rare talent of completely immersing you in time and place . . . A sweeping yet intimate family saga." --Sarah Jessica ParkerColeman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.
In 1916, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post-Civil War South for the "Promised Land" of the North. But soon they learn that even in Vauxhall, New Jersey, black women are mainly hired for domestic work, money is scarce, children don't progress in school, and black men die young. Within a few short years, both women's husbands are dead. Left to navigate this unwelcoming place alone, Celia and Lucy turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home. They become one another's closest confidantes and, encouraged by their mothers' friendship, their children's lives become enmeshed as well. However, with this closeness comes complication. As the children grow into adolescence, two are caught in an impulsive act of impropriety, and Celia and Lucy find themselves at irreconcilable odds over who's to blame. The ensuing fallout has dire consequences that reverberate through the next two generations of their families.A stunning biomythography--a word coined by the late great writer Audre Lorde--Coleman Hill draws from the author's own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history.
Product Details
Price
$28.00
$26.04
Publisher
Sjp Lit
Publish Date
September 05, 2023
Pages
320
Dimensions
0.0 X 0.0 X 0.0 inches | 0.0 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781638931140
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About the Author
Kim Coleman Foote was born and raised in New Jersey, where she started writing fiction at the age of seven(ish). A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has received additional fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Phillips Exeter Academy, Center for Fiction, and Fulbright, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook, among others. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, the Missouri Review, the Literary Review, Kweli, and Obsidian.
Reviews
"Coleman Hill is a masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true; a reading experience unlike anything else. This is the American story." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost
"Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer." --Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Red at the Bone
"In this sweeping and astonishing debut, Kim Coleman Foote explores complex questions of legacy and inheritance, reckoning frankly with the violence that has followed the Coleman family from slavery through emancipation and the Great Migration, but holding space for the resilience, storytelling, and second acts that also compose the family history. Coleman Hill is a gorgeous collage of history, memory, and imagination." --Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
"As though lit by the spirit of Audre Lorde, Kim Coleman Foote's Coleman Hill is a furnace, incandescent with characters who flare and burn, reflecting and refracting the complex ways collective trauma ripples down through the generations. Rare is a writer who bears witness to an intimate national history of violence with an unflinching eye so full of understanding. Coleman Hill is a masterful, singular debut. I loved this book." --Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors
"In Coleman Hill, Kim Coleman Foote crafts a mosaic of vibrant characters struggling to overcome generational curses. In doing so, she creates a novel that, though heartbreaking at times, is filled with family drama so urgent and riveting that it's hard to put down." --Maisy Card, American Book Award-winning author of These Ghosts Are Family
"Coleman Hill feels like we are in the living room as recipients of the most vital family lore. It is top-rate storytelling from the source's tongue. Bluesy, wholesome, and soulful. Archival and fabulistic. Trysts, triumphs, and triangles that weave together in a fine piece of patchwork mirroring the story of America itself. By the end of it, Vauxhall becomes as haloed a landscape as Winesburg, Ohio. This book will beckon you with writing so profoundly heavy that it may very well just tip itself off the shelf into your hands." --Sidik Fofana, author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
"This stunning debut stitches together a rich, layered narrative of two connected and conflicted African American families. These people endure misfortunes from one generation to the next, their lives offering heartfelt testimony to our ability as Black people in this country to make a way out of no way." --Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Fat Time and Other Stories
"At once intimate and panoramic, Coleman Hill is the stunning, tapestried story of the interweaving of two families across three generations and through seven decades of American history. Kim Coleman Foote has the rare talent of completely immersing you in time and place in this extraordinary debut." --Sarah Jessica Parker, SJP Lit
