MAMA FLORA'S FAMILY: A Novel | 
|  | | | Title: | MAMA FLORA'S FAMILY: A Novel | | Author: | David Stevens
Alex Haley
Debbi Morgan (Reader) | | Publisher: | Audioworks | | Type: | Book / Audio Cassette | | Publication Date: | 01 October, 1998 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0671043277 / 9780671043278 | | List Price: | $25.00 | | You Save: | $24.99 | | Amazon Price: | $0.01 (via Amazon marketplace seller) | | | |
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Product Description
In the tradition of "Roots" and "Queen, Mama Flora's Family" is a sweeping epic of contemporary American history, culled from the unpublished works of award-winning writer Alex Haley. It is the poignant story of three generations of an African-American family who start out as destitute sharecroppers in Tennessee. Mama Flora is the heart and strength of the family, shepherding her children through hard times after the murder of her husband by white land holders. She has passionate ambitions for her son Willie, but he dashes her dreams by abandoning his church-going roots and moving to Chicago. After fighting in the Second World War, he marries his childhood sweetheart and struggles to build a new urban life for his family. Flora's dreams are realized by Ruthana, her sister's child, whom Mama Flora adopts. Ruthana graduates from college, and as a social worker in Harlem, counsels underprivileged women. Through her love for the radical poet Ben, Ruthana begins to understand her heritage, and after a sojourn in Africa comes to a redemptive understanding of herself. In Chicago, Willie's twin son and daughter embrace Muslim militancy and Black Power, and eventually, drugs on their rocky road through the 1960s. Mama Flora struggles to maintain her family, but she also is caught up in the turbulent times. "Mama Flora's Family" is an American tale as dramatic and touching as anything Alex Haley ever wrote.
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.
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Customer Reviews:
• Great Book-one Of Haley's Best 30 January, 1999
Pretend that there is a really good review here. I loved reading this novel. It is one that is vary hard to put down because you can't help wondering what is going to happen next.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2UGSDEQM3NU9Q
• Like A Warm Blanket! 23 March, 2000
Reading this book is like cozying up with a warm blanket. The authors provide so much detail that you feel like YOUR grandmother is sitting in front of you, recounting the tales. The book spans the decades, from the early 1900s to the late 1970s and throws in a bit of history/current events to place the family's hostory in context. Great book!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2Z04MORE4J01L
• An Inspirational Story 04 April, 2001
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!
- Reviewed by customer ID: ALIXC5XTOE0QF
• A Very Moving, Poignant Multigenerational Epic! 05 February, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2CVXUY1EYQGGA
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