The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Ayana Mathis’s debut opens in 1923 as Hattie Shepherd, newly arrived in Philadelphia during the Great Migration, loses her first two children. The book then unfolds as a series of linked chapters, each centered on one of Hattie’s many children and grandchildren across the twentieth century. Together they form a portrait of a hard, withholding mother and a family shaped by her sacrifices, and of Black American life across several difficult decades.