THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF DUPREE

“The South takes from you, and the North can’t save you,” muses one of the matriarchs in Williams’ sprawling, affecting saga of the Dupree family.

Weaving together the stories of the complex lives of several generations of Black women from the 1860s to the 2020s, Williams delivers accounts of self-determination, resilience, and resistance in the face of monstrous violence, prejudice, and misogyny. Tati, a Chicago teenager prone to documenting her thoughts in poetry, searches for clues about the identity of her absent father, a man her single mother, Nadia, avoids talking about. Tati’s grandmother, Gladys, carries secrets of her own. When Tati asks about the details of Gladys’ move in the 1950s from the family’s hometown of Land’s End, Alabama, her questions are rebuffed: “Everything don’t need to be remembered,” is Gladys’ shrouded reply. The harrowing, cautionary, and sorrowful stories of prior ancestors Ruby, Jubilee, and Emma are recounted as Williams gradually reveals the history of earlier generations of the Dupree family. The spectral presence of the earliest Dupree daughter, whose identity and life story remain obscured by the passage of time and long-term secrecy, is omnipresent throughout the generations. As Tati continues her investigations into her own heritage, family secrets are sometimes reluctantly shared. Unvarnished descriptions of the atrocities of slavery and racism, as well as their corrosive aftermath, are conveyed directly and brutally. Rising out of the horrors, however, are the strong and unique bonds among the “uppity-ass Dupree women.” (Realistically, not all the bonds are immediately those of affection.) A beautifully woven motif of Black women caring for each other’s hair as a comfort, livelihood, or sign of closeness runs throughout the book, reinforcing the images of female power.

Williams’ genealogy of pain and survival pulls no punches.