Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic Paperback – April 28, 2007

In Dwelling Place, Erskine Clarke expands the chronological range of a notable series of letters--published in 1972 by Yale as Children of Pride--to write a history of the extended Jones family of nineteenth-century coastal Georgia, as well as the families of their "people," their slaves.This is a good book but not a great one. Clarke writes well enough, though his attempt to be novelistic by foreshadowing the future often seems forced. Clarke does significant service by emphasizing how important life events for southern slaveholders--marriages, deaths, and removal to distant locations--could often have disastrous effects on slave families, many of whom were torn apart by separations so final that slave spouses were treated as if they were dead to one another.Nevertheless, Dwelling Place has significant weaknesses. First, Clarke's chronological sweep, which takes the reader from 1805 to 1869, scoops up too many characters, many of whom are tangential to the main story as told through the lives of Charles and Mary Colcock Jones. Clarke provides helpful biographical notes and elaborate genealogical charts, but it's doubtful that any but the most persistent reader can keep all the characters straight.Second, although Clarke tries to put as much weight on slave existence as on the life of the masters, he is faced with a conundrum that exercises every historian who tries to write antebellum history from "the bottom up," that is, that the poor are frequently illiterate and therefore virtually inarticulate. Furthermore, lower class existence is repetitive and usually has small effect on the course of history. Sea island cuisine cannot hold its weight against the coming of the Civil War, which (in passing) Clarke slights.A more serious weakness is Clarke's repeated attempts to read the minds of the slaves in ways that satisfy twenty-first century taste. For instance, Cato, a driver for Charles Colcock Jones, says in a letter (written for him by a plantation manager) that he felt "like crying with love and gratitude" for such "a kind master." Clarke can't leave this letter without suggesting that slaves understood that "successful revolution only `grows out of the barrel of a gun,' and that slaves lacked the necessary firepower and military organization to challenge white hegemony."Maybe, maybe not. I have never been a slave, but I was a draftee infantryman during the Vietnam era and one definitely unsuited to military life. A historian who tried to guess how I felt about being pulled away from school to prepare to kill people would probably go far astray. Frustration and fear were mingled with patriotism and pride in my new (but definitely limited) military prowess. My calculated desire to shirk as much work and responsibility as possible was combined with a determination to accomplish my mission to the best of my ability. We do not have to adopt the Gone-with-the-Wind mentality about plantation slavery to believe that slaves were sometimes sincerely devoted to their masters and to the religious faith that they shared. They were not always hypocritical when they spoke words later romanticized by purveyors of the Lost Cause.Although I recommend Dwelling Place, the more sophisticated reader (especially one who has a taste for big books) should read Children of Pride instead. In that massive volume the reader can approach the remarkably articulate Jones family on its own terms and calculate its conflicted feelings about slavery without twenty-first century intervention.

Years ago I read The Children of Pride, consisting of a vast trove of letters of a prominent Georgia coastal family whose patriarch was a northern-educated Presbyterian minister, plantation owner, and enslaver. Tedious at first, that book turned into a fascinating soap-opera narrative. This important and extraordinary history by Clarke fills out the incomplete picture The Children of Pride started, by recovering (from the letters and elsewhere) important details about live of the slaves, the economy and management of plantations, and the religious lives and motivations of all the inhabitants. This work brings to light the networks of family and social relationships of the enslaved persons working on Liberty County plantations and living on their settlements; the double lives of enslaved persons; the connections between personal histories and particular places; and the tortured relationship among theology, religious faith, Biblical authority, political and social authority, and enslavement. The author's writing is clear and eloquent, and his insights are perceptive and illuminating. The work deserves the prizes and accolades it has received.

Conflicted, religious leader and slave owner. Extended family would be difficult to follow without the detailed notes and genealogical charts provided. Insightful, non-judgemental.

I have read many books on slavery and plantation life but this was one of the best and most comprehensive books I've read. I liked that the author really tried to give an unbiased view, or so it seemed to me. At one point, in the first half of the book, it somewhat gets bogged down with Charles Jones' views of educating the slaves on the subject of religion. It seemed somewhat redundant in that area but once past that portion of the book, it held my interest entirely. I was also disappointed that the photos were not allowed to be shown in the Kindle edition. I have never seen this happen before. They would have been very interesting to see. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend the book.

For a very scholarly and well-researched book, it read surprisingly like a fictional account. The narrative moved at a good pace and I developed a feeling for the characters. It offered insights into how the pseudo-paternalistic slaveholder religion transitioned into the racism of sharecropping and eventually Jim Crow. My complaints lie with the textual errors in the Kindle edition. There were many instances of incorrect spacing between words:“theone” (“the one”) and “norecord” (“no record”). Many words were hyphenated mid-sentence, not at the end of a line. This was especially common with proper names such as “May-bank” and “Leigh-ton.” Kind of a shame for such a thorough book to have such a shoddy text.

This is not a review of the content of the book, but of the Kindle edition which is riddled with crappy layout and wonky word spacing and lacks the illustrations (leaving big gaps with explanatory text that direct you to consult the print edition because the illustrations were not licensed for digital distribution!) Amazon reviews don’t recognize that all editions are not the same -and it’s a crap shoot what you will get when you order. buyer beware.

Comprato usato è arrivato in ottime condizioni, puntuale nel giorno stabilito. Sono pienamente soddisfatta dell'acquisto da me effettuato. Voto massimo meritato.