Jocelyn Nicole Johnson: “As a Black Southern woman, I’m full of dread”

“My Monticello,” the anchoring novella in Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s debut collection, follows Da’Naisha Love, a young Black woman born and raised in Virginia, through a near-future world of environmental and social collapse. Cell phones no longer work; gas and electricity are unavailable; mobs of racists have taken over. Love leads a diverse group of neighbors fleeing a violent white militia to find refuge in Jefferson’s home and plantation, Monticello, where she once worked. Da’Naisha Love is also connected to Monticello in another way: she is a descendent of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, as is the ailing grandmother Love watches and worries over. The makeshift refugee community becomes a family, staking their claim over the land, their history, and their future, ultimately leaving room for love and hope.

Johnson’s collection explores the deep connections between our nation’s legacy of white supremacy and the climate crisis in which we now find ourselves. Her stories play out the consequences — foreseen or not — of a past unexamined and unreconciled. My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and tackles the most intractable and urgent issues of our time with originality, vision, and a rare warmth and humanity.

This combination of qualities may well be the product of wisdom and experience accumulated over time: Johnson has lived and worked in Charlottesville, Virginia for over twenty years, teaching art to public school elementary students. She recently described herself as a “50-year-old literary debutant,” with the publication of her much-anticipated debut collection, and the announcement of a deal with Netflix. One might also