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The Confessions of Matthew Strong: A Novel - Hardcover

Power-Greene, Ousmane

 
9781635422085: The Confessions of Matthew Strong: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1635422086 ISBN 13: 9781635422085
Verlag: Other Press, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

An NPR Best Book of the Year

A wildly original, incendiary story about race, redemption, the dangerous imbalances that continue to destabilize society, and speaking out for what’s right.

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York—the same night her grandmother dies—or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie’s story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong.
        From the beginning, Allie had the clues: in a spate of possibly connected disappearances of other young Black women; in a series of recently restored plantation homes; in letters outlining an uprising; in maps of slave trade routes and old estates; in hidden caves and buried tunnels; and finally, in a confessional that should never have existed. They just have to make a case strong enough for the FBI and police to listen. This is when Allie herself disappears.
        Allie is a survivor. She survived the newly post-Jim Crow south, she survived cancer, and she will survive being stalked and kidnapped by Matthew Strong, who seeks to ignite a revolution. The surprise in this doesn’t lie in the question of will she be taken; it lies in how she and her community outsmart a tactical madman.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ousmane K. Power-Greene is the Program Director of Africana Studies and an Associate Professor of History at Clark University. Power-Greene is the author of Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle Against the Colonization Movement, and his writing appears in The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters. He’s been featured on All Things Considered, C-SPAN Book TV, and NPR’s history podcast Throughline.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

PROLOGuE
 
If you keep coming around here little girl people will begin to think you’ve taken a liking to Matthew Strong. I guess there are worse things than befriending an old man like me. But you don’t seem like the sort of person who’d concern herself with what others say about her. Tell me something. How come you out here by yourself?
Oh, I see. These cats sure are cute. You got your eye fixed on one of them? Her? Why don’t you pick her up and bring her closer so I can get a better look.
Yes, she’s a pretty one indeed. I like ginger and white as well. Matter of fact, now that you got me thinking about it, I do recall seeing another cat just like her. They like to congregate out here near this abandoned shack.

I wasn’t born with bad vision. In fact, I had about the best vision of any of the white or colored boys I used to play with when I was a kid. When them boys were waiting while their fathers weighed the cotton, they’d come out to where I’d be, pump gun on my shoulder, tin cans on a stump and a few dangling from a fishing line tied to a birch branch. I’d tell ’em they could borrow my pump gun if they’d give me a penny, and they’d say, “Nah.” Then I’d cock the gun and shoot a pellet in one of them cans. I’d say, “Bet you can’t hit none of ’em.” They’d pull off their straw hats, making all sorts of bold claims. I’d laugh and bet ’em a dime they couldn’t hit not one of ’em. Got ’em every time. I must’ve earned me ten dollars over the years.
You like stories? Me too.
There was this old Negro who worked on my daddy’s land used to always say, “Truth is buried within those tall tales old folks tell. You just gotta take the time to untangle them.” But most young people these days ain’t got no patience to figure out any of the stories I tell whether they’re true or not.
I’ve learned over the years most people have a hard time accepting what’s true even when it smacks them on the back of their head. But a man got no problem believing a pack of lies. Especially when he don’t have the courage to make amends for his sins, and the lies he tells to justify ’em.

What’s that? Time for you to go home?
You right. Bet your grandma be worried with you out here by yourself. Now, remind me again what you said your name is?
Oh, yes, Odessa, that’s right. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.
Before you go, you mind doing me a favor? Think you can help me find my brown leather book where I keep my stories? I dropped it somewhere in this shack when I was feeding them cats. My vision ain’t so good no more.
You see, that leather book is where I keep those tall tales this old Negro used to tell me when I was a boy. You think you have time to listen to me read one?
Whichever one you like. Don’t make a bit of difference to me. Maybe something short? It’ll be dark soon. No telling what’s in these woods.

BOOK I 
 
PRESENT DAY
 
My name is Allegra Douglass. I am one of the survivors.
My story may make you angry. Not necessarily at me, but about the reason things happened the way they did. Only looking back can I put the pieces together in a coherent manner, or at least in a way that makes any sense at all.
As a philosopher, I am drawn to problems. I’m fascinated by the relationship between ideas and actions; ideas behind our motivations; ideas beneath our fears. Some ideas, however, take you down paths best left unexplored; ground best left undisturbed.
Many newspapers, publishers, and magazines begged me to tell this story. But I have no desire for the media to frame my story as one of race redemption or progress from the days Klan night riders paraded openly down Sixteenth Street in Birmingham.
I refused to allow them to exploit the kidnap and torture of black girls. I wouldn’t tell them what Matthew Strong confessed to me when I was trapped in that plantation home and forced to write his white supremacist mission to redeem the South. I refused to make him more well-known than men like Charles Manson or let him go down in history as some modern-day Nathan Bedford Forrest.
At least, that’s what I told everyone who asked. But what is the truth? The truth is that I feared having my name forever associated with Matthew Strong. And I feared, after people read my story, they would sympathize with his mission even if they deplored his methods.
And this was exactly what he wanted.
There are those who never believed I’d remain steadfast in my determination to withhold my story from the public. Some assumed when I finally accepted what happened I’d be ready to speak. Others shadowed my posts online, waiting like dogs for me to toss a bone, trying to anticipate when I would break my silence.
One thing is for certain: all the talk in the world won’t change anything.
So why have I decided to tell you this now?
Maybe it’s because of something my grandma used to say: “Let your faith be greater than your fear.” Of course, she meant this from a Christian perspective, an entire system of beliefs I had abandoned when I entered college. I may still question the whole “Jesus died for your sins, on the third day he was resurrected, he ascended to heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead” thing.
But now I find St. Paul’s claim that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” to be a guiding principle. Maybe my fear has forced me to have faith that what I say will change the course of events unfolding just how Matthew Strong said they would.
Ever since I was liberated from the plantation home where Matthew Strong and his men held me and eleven other black women and girls, whenever I hear a southern accent, memories of my abduction return like mosquitoes at sunset hovering over my arm, darting through my fingers, daring me to slap so they can laugh and dash, laugh and dash.
That’s how my memories come back to me. The first time after I heard a man’s voice at my favorite coffee shop, another time when I came out of my apartment and stumbled into a UPS delivery man.
Then, I’m there again, feeling my legs go numb, my mind distorted by whatever they drugged me with. I hear the man who said he came to protect me ask if I feel strange—the ends of his words clipped like he was speaking into a fan. I glance at him and his concerned face melts into a cocky grin. Now he’s laughing. They were all laughing, laughing, laughing.
Next, I feel them lift me through the air like a suitcase, before pushing me in the trunk. Keys click; the car engine revs. Windshield wipers slap against the glass, rapid beeping, then I black out.
When I woke, I had no idea how long we’d been driving or where we were. Had we left Alabama? Were we in Mississippi? At one point we stopped and I had to go to the bathroom badly. I tapped the trunk with my knuckles. Silence. I was desperate. I banged harder. Finally, I heard feet crunching over.
“If you keep banging, we’re gonna have to give you more medicine. You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.” There was a pause.
Then I heard a beep and the trunk opened. Two masked men stood over me, one with a drawn pistol. The other held a machine gun strapped across his back. I had pulled down my blindfold, but they insisted I put it back on before they lifted me out of the trunk.
“Where are we?”
They said nothing as they walked me across gravel to the...

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Verlag
Other Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1635422086
ISBN 13 
9781635422085
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
416
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Verantwortliche Person
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