The Book of Night Women is a 2009 novel by Jamaican author Marlon James. The book was first published in hardback on February 19, 2009, by Riverhead Books. The story follows Lilith, a young woman born into slavery, who challenges the boundaries of what is expected of her.
The six half-sisters or "night women" form a clandestine sisterhood, meeting in the witching hour to formulate the overthrow of their white oppressors in an island-wide insurgency, with the hope of creating a slave free state.
the book of night women
James uses the imagery of witchcraft and African shamanism inventively, as a metaphor for political resistance. Homer, the head of the sisterhood, has a supreme mastery of African lotions and potions that magically heal the other women from the whippings, rapes and beatings they endure; she uses the same potent herbs to send the masters and their wives into deranged states of mind as a form of revenge for the cruelty meted out to her sisters.
Lilith travels through the book resisting the sisterhood yet, at the same time, she is unable to submit fully to her powerless status as a slave. As a result, is a natural rebel, lashing out at her oppressors with a murderous rage. She is both exhilarated by this demonic energy within her ("Mayhaps true womanness was to be free to be as terrible as you wish") and at other times, is described as a hand-wringing Lady Macbeth, consumed by self-loathing and guilt.
In the end, the book is not just about the institutionalised hatred inherent in slavery but also a love story, with an inevitably tragic outcome. Lilith first struggles against the romantic overtures made by the Irish overseer, Robert Quinn ("you commanding slave to be free?" she asks him with horror), then submits to his advances, although she makes the mental note "no woman can afford to feel anything for a man in 1801", and she finally realises the love Quinn offers - bringing her freedom in the bedroom but leaving her as enslaved in other aspects of life - is just not enough. From this realisation comes her final act of rebellion, as well as her atonement.
She is one of the night women, six half-sisters -- all the progeny of that first overseer, the brutal Jack Wilkins. His daughters set in motion an uprising whose horror and retaliation turn the entire world of slavery upside down for a day.
Sugar estates were male-driven places so Fanny Hill made sense. But so did Fielding, especially Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, which would have excited younger men and scandalised older. My reason was also personal. The first time a book ever drove me to write fiction was Tom Jones. For one, literature has never had a greater plot before or since, and two, the book is hilarious.
From the WINNER of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings"An undeniable success.” — The New York Times Book Review A true triumph of voice and storytelling, The Book of Night Women rings with both profound authenticity and a distinctly contemporary energy. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they- and she-will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings, desires, and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. But the real revelation of the book-the secret to the stirring imagery and insistent prose-is Marlon James himself, a young writer at once breath­takingly daring and wholly in command of his craft.Available for purchase at:AmazonBarnes & NobleBooks A MillionHudson BooksellersIndieBoundPowell'sTargetWalmartGoogle Play Store - Audiobook (Downloadable format)iBooks - Audiobook (Downloadable format)Kobo - Audiobook (Downloadable format)Audible - Audiobook (Downloadable format)audiobooks.com - Audiobook (Downloadable format)
The Book of Night Women Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis tohelp you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:Plot SummaryChaptersCharactersSymbols and SymbolismSettingsThemes and MotifsStyles This detailed literature summary also contains Quotes and a Free Quiz onThe Book of Night Women by Marlon James .The Book of Night Women is a historical novel that begins in 1785 in Jamaica. Lilith, a green-eyed mulatto girl is born into slavery. Her mother dies in childbirth and the overseer, Jack Wilkins, places Lilith with a slave named Circe and a mad slave named Tantalus, as all of the other women are afraid of her because of her eyes. Lilith believes that Circe and Tantalus are her parents until she is 14, when Circe tells her that she is not her mother. Around the same time, Lilith experiences an attempted rape. Rather than succumbing, Lilith kills the man who tries to rape her. When Circe comes home, she finds Lilith with the dead body.
Circe gets Homer, an even more powerful slave than Circe, to help with the situation. Homer brings two other women with her. They conceal the body and Homer takes Lilith with her to the main house. While Lilith is there, Homer teaches her to read and leads her to the meeting of the night women where Homer and five other women are plotting to take their freedom. At the first meeting, Lilith finds out that these women are her half- sisters and that their father is the overseer, Jack Wilkins, who placed her with Circe and Tantalus. Lilith thinks that she is better than all of them and does not want to join their group.
Voices of the Enslaved is a beautifully written and masterfully researched book (also award-winning) on the French period in colonial Louisiana. White traces the fleeting appearances of enslaved Africans in Louisiana court records to illuminate how they were able to achieve legal recognition where their enslavers tried to give them none. Out of the many fragments of legal documents, White creates a collage of Black lives in French Louisiana that really illuminates the Black contributions to the region.
A strong theme in this book is that of race being a construct rather than an innate true difference in people. Since Lilith is bi-racial, she has trouble simply aligning herself with one side or the other. Although at first she hates white people, she comes to deeply care for a white man. She comes to see people as individuals and not their race, but alas that thought process is far too advanced for the time she is living in, and she senses this.
Marlon James will be in Dayton on Sunday, November 7 to receive the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction. He won the award for his novel "The Book of Night Women." Set on a Jamaican sugar plantation during the late 18th century, this book is the story of a fictional slave revolt that was organized by a group of women, the "night women" of the title.
In this interview the author talks about his own roots in Jamaica, his inspiration for this book, and how he feels about winning this award. He also discusses his passion for literature and music. James is an avid reader and record collector. He's on the faculty of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Eighteenth-century Jamaica is written from the inside out, from basements and kitchens, in fervent conversations between women named Homer, Gorgon, Circe, and Pallas; at the Montpelier estate, the overseer Jack Wilkins had a thing for Greek mythology.
The Night Women are a group of mulatto women who were fathered by Jack Wilkins who meet under the cover of darkness to practice Myal (a form of Jamaican spiritual magic) and plot a grand rebellion.As Lilith grows to become a teenager she begins to exhibit great strength and rebellious spirit, after killing a would-be rapist she is enlisted in to the Night Women.However, the naturally rebellious Lilith found that she did not entirely fit in with a group of Night Women, just as she didn't fit in with the wider plantation society.
his elderswould soon die and "even though ithad been long since they had protected me from anything, I would be leftalone and exposed to the world, devoid ofhome and love, leftalone to confront all thepeople fullofpain and anger." Michele Levy North CarolinaA&T University Marlon James. The Book of Night Women. New York. Riverhead. 2009. 417 pages. $26.95. isbn 978-1-59448-857-3 Jamaican author Marlon James sets his second novel on a Jamai can sugar plantation early in the nineteenth century. Steeped in vio lence, animosity, and mistrust, the characters in the novel suffer from thedegradations of slavery and the frustrated desire for freedom. The novel's protagonist isLilith, a young woman whose fourteen-year-old mother dies inchildbirth,andwhose firstsignificant act is themurder of another slave who attempts to rape her. Victim of and witness tobrutal punishment, Lilithmurders a white family,but she is reluctant to join the women who meet secretly at night to plan what becomes an unsuccess ful revolt. Lilith's feelings through out the novel remain ambiguous. Angered and numbed by the vio lencemeted out bywhites, she none theless protects her father,a white overseer who raped her mother, and the Irishmanwho has both overseen her whippings and felt something close to love for her. While the events James relates are disturbing and significant, his novel is flawed. His treatment of character is superficial, and his fixation on genitals, "rutting/' and sexualized aggression becomes pre dictable and reductive. There are intriguing but unfulfilled aspects of the novel. James doesn't capital ize on the significance of the liter ary texts Lilith learns to read. He gives slaves ancient Greek names but doesn't develop this themati cally. Unlike several other Carib bean writers, his patois isplodding and unimaginative: "Sometimes in the early morning she see Robert Quinn. Sometimes RobertQuinn see her before she see him." And James repeatedly substitutes silence, long looks,and hisses for meaningful dia logue or narration. "Lilith don't say nothing. He look at her for a long time." Sentences like these occur throughout the novel and suggest a lack of imagination. During the slave rebellion, "Lilith look at the great house and thinkofMiss Iso bel." Butwhat does she think?Feel ing guilty because she killed Miss Isobel's family,does Lilith hope Iso bel has escaped or been tortured as retribution for her own brutal treatmentof slaves? We never find out. The narrator describes Lilith as "wanting tobe everythingand noth ing." Such ambivalence isultimately a deficit. Jim Hannan LeMoyne College Katja Kallio.Syntikirja.Helsinki. Otava. 2009. 303 pages. 30.50. isbn978-951 1-23854-6 Katja Kallio has published novels, a collection of stories, a book about filmsand television series, authored film scripts, and translated litera ture fromEnglish and Spanish into Finnish. Syntikirja(The book of sins) exemplifies a welcome trend in cur rent Finnish literature, the aim of which is to extend literature's reach beyond itscultural and domestically familiar borders. Rather than being centered inwhat is customary and emphatically familiar, Kallio expects her readers to keep pace with the Marlon James //fr BOOK ^NIGHT WOMEN novel's many variances in such areas hHH as narrative structure,cultural familSflfl iarity, and thematic twists and turns. To begin, Syntikirjaturnsout not to be real in any material sense but H^l a book thatSofia, daughter of TuuH ^H likki,whose consciousness inhabits certainly the firstpart of the novel, fl^H "writes" in her mind rather than on paper, the composition ofwhich is i^^H based on "everything she did wrong, ormatters inwhich she perceived to have failed."At thatpoint, thereader might be aware of the name Sofia as a derivative of Sophia, a mythi cal personification ofGod's wisdom,^^ to cite one interpretation, and the reader is led toponder the reliability j^^B of thenarrator.At thevery least, few things turnout tobewhat theyseem H^h atfirst. flj^fl Structurally, the novel opens 9H with Henri, Tuulikki's husband of I^Hh thirty-fiveyears, leaving her with 1H no explanation. Yet Kallio maintains l^^l elements of suspense while revers ing the traditional order of cause and effect.Although Henri has, in fact, moved inwith anotherwoman, H^h Tuulikki abandons themere... 2ff7e9595c
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