Makeda

August 15, 2011

Through his grandmother Makeda, narrator Gray March finds much to love about his African—and his African-American—heritage.

For a time Gray has only known his blind and loving grandmother in her persona as Mattie March, a laundress for white families in Richmond, Va., but it turns out she has great depth to her soul. For one thing, her real name turns out to be Makeda, reflecting an African heritage that goes back generations. For another, she has dream-visions of past life experiences, one of the most notable being her memory as the daughter of Ongnonlou, a 14th-century Dogon priest from Mali. Mattie/Makeda accepts these dreams as a matter of course, and as she spins out her past history to 15-year-old Gray, he becomes fascinated and writes down the details of her life as a Dogon girl. Most startlingly, the Dogon people are skilled astronomers who worship Sirius as well as some smaller, satellite stars...whose existence wasn't confirmed by astronomers until the late 20th century. (According to Robinson's postscript, this detailed astronomical knowledge of the Dogon is a mystery that has yet to be resolved.) Gray's fascination with his grandmother's story eventually leads him to Mali, and his research confirms the existence of Ongnonlou as well as geographical details of the landscape of which Makeda could obviously have no firsthand knowledge. Makeda also channels other past lives, in one of which she was a Jew and in another a Muslim, but her experience of having been raised Dogon over 500 years before dominates both her life and her grandson's. 

Robinson writes with erudition about strange and wonderful matters. 

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011

Gray Marsh is close to his blind grandmother, who entrusts him with stories of past lives she experiences in dreams. Her vivid dreams of a childhood in Africa include many facts that should be unknown to her, including customs, geographical features, and astronomical observations made by the Dogon people. Gray investigates these claims as he grows older and establishes himself in the academic community, and he comes to see himself and his grandmother as exceptionally connected to an African past. A journey to Mali predictably confirms not only the mystical details of his grandmother's visions but also the narrator's growing belief that he has been educationally shortchanged by the Western canon. VERDICT Robinson (The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks) attempts to craft a unique coming-of-age novel set in a racially divided America, but his story is flawed by repetitive and didactic passages that veer frequently into polemic. A controversial novel on history and race that may interest readers of African and African American history.--John R. Cecil, Austin, TX

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011
Gray March's blind grandmother sees things no one else does: scenes from a fourteenth-century Ethiopian royal procession, religious ceremonies with Moors in Spain, frightened migrations through the Civil War-torn Virginia countryside, even the placement of stars that astrologers are just now beginning to identify. How she, an uneducated, untraveled, impoverished black woman, knows these things is a mystery Gray feels compelled to solve. As he listens to Makeda's retelling of her Homeric dream-state travels and puzzling experiences, Gray begins to realize that his grandmother is a reincarnate soul, whose past lives during critical periods in civilization's development may provide him with much-needed guidance on how to be a black man in the racially charged South of the 1960s. Traveling to West Africa to find the source of Makeda's wisdom, Gray discovers as much about himself as he does about the woman who so significantly influences him. Eloquent and erudite, Robinson's oft-times mystical coming-of-age saga teems with rich and evocative historical insights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)