Mama Flora's Family: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Alex Haley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 1999

She vowed to find a better world for her children.  Even if she had to make it herself.

A sweeping epic of contemporary history by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alex Haley, this magnificent novel weaves an unforgettable story of one family, three generations, and their search for the American dream....

She is the heart and soul of her family who, through faith and courage, drives herself, her children, and her grandchildren onward, determined to propel them to a better place. Mama Flora, born to poor sharecroppers in Tennessee, is forced to raise her children alone after the murder of her husband. But it will not be Willie, her son, who fulfills her ambitions, but Ruthana, the niece she raises as her own. Inspired by her love for the radical poet Ben, Ruthana seeks her soul in Africa even as Willie's son and daughter embrace Black Power and drugs in their embattled coming-of-age. Throughout all the seasons of their lives, it is Mama Flora who prevails, whose quiet determination and love bring them back, as she leads her own quest for justice in tumultuous times.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots, Alex Haley showed a masterful talent for dramatizing the triumphs and tragedies of African Americans and their families. This book--the basis for a 1998 CBS miniseries--was "cowritten" by David Stevens after Haley's death in 1992, telling the story of Flora, a black girl born to a sharecropping family in Mississippi who later moves to Memphis, Tennessee, where her husband, Booker, is killed by white landowners. Her son, Willie, moves to Chicago, fights in World War II, and marries, while Flora adopts her niece, Ruthauna, who later goes to college.

Those events in Mama Flora's life span the gap between 1912 and the modern era, and along the way, Haley depicts the Civil Rights-Black Power paradigm that caused disagreements in many black families. But, ultimately what Haley shows through Flora is the undying Afro-American belief in moral justice, and an ancestral drive for freedom that, in the case of Mama Flora's family, is strong enough even to withstand the ravages of drug abuse plaguing contemporary American families. --Eugene Holley Jr. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Somewhere along the line, the late Haley (Roots) or his collaborator Stevens (Queen) made the calculated decision to sacrifice the warm, personal and often sentimental story of a black sharecropper's life for the more global and sensational sweep of roughly three quarters of a century of African American history. And therein lies just one of the failings of this posthumous novel, which traces the Zelig-like descendants of a larger-than-life matriarch, Mama Flora, from 1920 to the present day. After her young husband, a Tennessee sharecropper, is mortally wounded when caught stealing from white landowners, he makes her promise that their son Willie will get an education. But after Willie drops out of school and is temporarily lured to the fleshpots of Chicago, Flora invests all her energy in her sister's orphan, Ruthana. By the time we see the third generation turn either to drugs or to politics (the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam), the novel has lost all sense of proportion and is shipping its characters to every imaginable hot spot in recent African American (or American, or African) history, from HUAC's persecution of the Jewish family for whom Mama Flora works to political repression under Idi Amin. At the same time, Haley and Stevens lose the human touch that animates the novel's first half?the dollar bill sent as a wedding gift, the mother who pretends to be dropping money into the collection plate in order to keep up appearances. As corny and sentimental as the early chapters are, they have something that the latter portion of the novel lacks, and that's credibility.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Dell (November 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044023543X
• ISBN-13: 978-0440235439
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,404,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Moving, Poignant Multigenerational Epic!, February 4, 2008

By 

bobbewig (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Mama Flora's Family : A Novel (Hardcover)

At the center of Mama Flora's Family is the indomitable spirit of Mama Flora, the matriarch of an extraordinary family of destitute Tennessee sharecroppers. The characters are so real and believable it made this reader feel that I was right there with them experiencing all their trials and tribulations, as well as the joys. This book is much more than a poignant, hard-to-put-down story of a Mama Flora and her descendants from 1920 to the late 1990s. It, for the most part, effectively weaves into the plot much of what has transpired in American/African-American history during this time period (e.g., life for African-Americans in the South, the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, the Viet Nam war, political repression under Idi Amin, etc). Mama Flora's Family is a rich, resonant family novel that cuts across the barriers that divide us to touch the hearts of people of all races and backgrounds. I highly recommend this excellent, emotionally-packed posthumous novel written by David Stevens based on Alex Haley's notes and research.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspirational story, April 3, 2001

By 

Shaundra Johnson (WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mama Flora's Family: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

This novel is one of the best I have read. Alex Haley and Stevens express a kind of compassion from a grandmother/mother that no one could do better. It's a very emotional book, and touches everyone that has ever experienced a good book. Once you start it, you can't put it down!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Story, December 26, 1999

By 

C. Rose (gilbert,az) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mama Flora's Family: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

This book made you feel apart of it. I loved it! I loved the history, the story, the emotions and how it wove a story of a loving family working their way through life. This is a must read.