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Jam on the Vine: A Novel Kindle Edition

by LaShonda Barnett (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 155 ratings

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In this “captivating saga” of the post-Reconstruction era, a black female journalist blazes her own trail—“unforgettable; gripping; an instant classic” (Elle).

Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, discovers a lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer. Living in the segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in the printed word until she earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson Collegiate in Austin.
Finally fleeing the Jim Crow South to settle in Kansas City, Ivoe and Ona, her former teacher and present lover, start the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam On the Vine. In the throes of the Red Summer—the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest—Ivoe risks her freedom and her life to call attention to the atrocities of the American prison system.

Inspired by the legacy of trailblazing black women like Ida B. Wells and Charlotta Bass, LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam On the Vine is both an epic vision of the hardships that defined an era and “an ode to activism, writ[ten] with a scholar’s eye and a poet’s soul” (Tayari Jones, O The Oprah Magazine).

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Jam on the Vine:

One of NBC’s “14 Books to Read This Black History Month”
One of TheGuardian.com’s “Best Books This February”

“Weaving actual historical records throughout, Barnett creates an ode to activism, writing with a scholar’s eye and a poet’s soul.” —Tayari Jones, O the Oprah Magazine

“As addictive as your mom’s fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits, and just as delicious.” —Essence

“[A] big, bold bildungsroman of a debut.” —The Guardian.com

“This wonderful debut novel takes the early 20th century and brings it to life . . . a wonderfully vibrant, fully realized vision of the shadowy corners of America’s history.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This compelling work of historical fiction about a black female journalist escaping Jim Crow laws of the South and fighting injustice in Kansas City, MO, through her reportage, will bring wider recognition to the role of the African American press in American history, especially during 1919’s Red Summer of lynchings and race rioting in northern cities.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“An impassioned historical novel chronicles the early-20th-century resurgence of African-American activism through the life of a poor Texas girl who channels a lifelong love of newsprint into a groundbreaking journalism career . . . Barnett excels here at what for most writers is a difficult task: evoking what it feels like to grow into one’s calling as a writer through psychological intimacy as much as immediate experiences.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A celebration of beauty, boldness, of the flowering of family, and the triumph of liberty against the odds that freedom and justice always face, this big-hearted kaleidoscopic novel illuminates our history and Barnett’s indomitable protagonist lifts up the reader.” —Amy Bloom

“By telling a sweeping story of one remarkable woman and her family, Barnett carries us through the joys and horrors of the black experience at the turn of the past century with such immediacy that we feel the events personally. Ivoe’s story becomes our story as she gathers the courage to become her truest self by founding her own newspaper and finding her voice. Barnett’s language is lyrical and gritty, salty and funny and piercing all at once. Buoyed by the indomitable spirit of her heroine, she carries us with a steady hand through a crucial history, which gains an eerie relevance in light of today’s racial dynamics.” —Margaret Wrinkle

“From the cotton fields of Jim Crow Texas to Kansas City to Paris and back again, Jam On the Vine's story of family, courage, and love will grab you and not let go. I loved this novel so much I wanted to start reading it again as soon as I finished.” —Marie Myung-Ok Lee

“In lyric prose Barnett delivers a vivid portrait of life in America under Jim Crow in early 20th century. From the rural south and through the Great Migration to the cities of the industrial Midwest, she delves deeply into the lives of characters who endure the oppression and violence of racism. Jam On The Vine is a stunning and vital novel that heralds an essential and important new voice in American letters.” —Jeffrey Lent

“Jam On The Vine is a wonder of a first novel. Following the struggles of one remarkable family through generations of adversity, this powerful and beautifully-written story resonates with historical significance and shines in the end with the triumph of the human spirit.” —Amy Greene, author of Bloodroot and Long Man

“From Juneteenth in Texas, to the 1925 Pan African Congress in Paris, Barnett combines an historian’s craft with a novelist’s heart. Her heroine is propelled through innovative tropes: the ingenuity of her Muslim mother, her love of knowledge, passion for women, and determination to use the printed word as a tool for freedom. A romance of the Black female intellectual that is compelling, informative and triumphant.” —Sarah Schulman

About the Author

LaShonda Katrice Barnett was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She is the editor of the volumes I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft (2007) and Off the Record: Conversations with African American and Brazilian Women Musicians (2015). She has taught literature and history at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, and Brown University.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00OV9D96S
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; Reprint edition (February 3, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 3, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5461 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 366 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,009,398 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,340 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)
- #4,954 in U.S. Historical Fiction
- #7,933 in Black & African American Women's Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 155 ratings

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Dawn Langley

love, and ambition

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2015

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One of the reasons JAM ON THE VINE succeeds is because it's an honest and heartfelt story about family, love, and ambition. The characters are real, their hardships test them but do not break them, and the historical references are accurate. The writing is lush and thoughtful, and often a sentence is one you must read again for the pure enjoyment of it . . . just like one would like to taste the delicious tomato jam that the main character's (Ivoe) mother produces for the neighborhood women.

Set during the early 20th century in Texas and Kansas, the story of Ivoe is one that will feel both similar and different to readers. The family at the center of the story is African-American, familiar in many ways from stories written by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. But this family is also different from what has already been part of many novels. This family is also Muslim. Barnett offers a glimpse into a world surprising and alien, but also one that readers can understand. The family's center is Ivoe, a lover of the written word, commits what could be a deadly sin for a Black girl in the Jim Crow South: she steals. But what she steals is far more important than the theft itself. She steals a newspaper. And like so many girls before and after her, she reads it in secret, luxuriating in its ability to take her far away from her own reality.

It is that need to both escape reality as well as to mirror it that pushes Ivoe into the newspaper business. She takes her family with her to her new career and integrates them in the new home she builds -- with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. As she grows into her new life, she also recognizes that her love for her female friends is more than just an appreciation of that relationship. It's a love she cannot deny and she embraces it completely.

Barnett's tale of racism and the birth of African-American newspapers is made more strong by the integration of this marvelous family -- and the recipes and musical interludes that sprinkle the pages of this novel. It's a wonderful book that I hated to see end.

One person found this helpful

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Rosalind Wooten

An In-depth African American Perspective of The Pursuit of Love and Liberty!

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2023

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Ms. Barnett artistically weaves a valuable story of love, determination and perseverance, reflecting the Importance of The Black Press!! AMAZING!

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B. J. Taylor

Portrait of Life in Jim Crow America

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2015

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This is a very honest look at life for a black woman trying to be a journalist in the US in the early 20th century.

Even in her childhood Ivoe is fascinated with newspapers. She steals every one she can from her mother’s white employer. The written word is her escape from the poverty she lives in. She becomes determined to fulfill her obsession with journalism. Her excellent writing and grades gain her a scholarship. She excels in journalism at the school. But when she applies for jobs she finds herself “overqualified. Her potential employers cannot see beyond her skin color.

The writing in most of the book sets the scene so perfectly. Some of the sayings are delightful. When a woman asks Lemon, Ivoe’s mother, if she knows Annie Faye, Lemon replies with “We’ve howdyed but we ain’t never shook.” And then there is “Every time I stand up, my mind sits down.” And when Roena, Lemon’s daughter-in-law, says she regrets marrying Timbo, Lemon tells “Can’t put the rain back in the sky.” I love that!

The characters are down to earth and seem so real. Life is hard for them but they keep on battling the poverty and discrimination they encounter every day of their lives. They do whatever it takes to support their families. Lemon makes jam and prepares vegetables for the community; her husband, Ennis goes off with the plan to make money and have his join him later.

The author describes the minor transgressions that get mostly the black men (but some women too) thrown into jail. The conditions of those jails are deplorable. It nauseated me to even read about them.

When Ivoe continues to find herself unable to break into journalism, her lover and the community encourage her to start her own black newspaper. It was interesting to read how they went about doing it, and the resistance they encountered.

The last chapter was a real disappointment to me. It seemed as though Ms. Barnett had a vast amount of research she had not gotten into the book. So in the last chapter it is all thrown in there. The chapter is rushed, disconnected, and preachy. It was a truly disappointing end to an otherwise wonderfully written novel

One person found this helpful

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Cindy T. Rizzo

Engage your passion for justice and for love

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2015

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Meticulously researched, beautifully written with details that engage all of your senses, Jam on the Vine is a beautiful book, a characterization I use very sparingly. The reader is completely wrapped up in the historical and social context of early 20th century Jim Crow, both its rural and its urban contexts, which only underscores the amazing triumphs of the main characters, especially the two couples whose love stories are at the heart of this book. Be prepared though to be shocked by how little has changed when you read about police abuse of African Americans and what is now being called the "prison industrial complex" which has effectively disenfranchised most African American men. In the midst of our own 21st Century Black Lives Matter headlines, it is indeed sobering to realize that many of the issues that the Black press covered in the 1920s are still with us to this day. But don't let that reality keep you from this moving story, where a mother's garden and industrious spirit saves her family; where a father and husband's love sustains him through years of agonizing separation; where a passion for justice and for each other spurs two amazing women to build a life together as well as a newspaper megaphone that sounds the call in its native Kansas City and beyond. Most of all, just read this book.

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Patti Heavens

did not like the writing style

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2015

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Interesting. Did not expect the lesbian aspects; did not like the writing style, jumped around too much.

2 people found this helpful

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