This Spring, two new books with direct ties to Kingstree and Williamsburg County hit the bookstores. One is Homespun, the third and final novel in Sophia Alexander's Silk trilogy, the story of one family, living near Kingstree and Greeleyville from the late 1800s until World War II. The second, published last week, is a memoir by Kingstree native Joseph McGill, Jr., co-authored with veteran reporter and free-lance writer Herb Frazier. This memoir, Sleeping with the Ancestors, recounts how McGill began his Slave Dwelling Project in 2010; what he's learned from 13 years of sleeping in the dwelling places of the enslaved; and the awareness he believes the project is bringing to various groups of Americans.
While his first night in a slave cabin was in May 2010, the seeds of the project were planted much earlier when Joe McGill was a military policeman in the US Air Force, stationed in Germany. During that time, he and other military personnel toured Amsterdam in the Netherlands. On the tour, they were able to visit the attic in which Anne Frank and her family were hidden from the Nazis. McGill writes that in that moment he realized how much places matter.
McGill went on to work for the National Park Service; the Penn Center on St. Helena Island; The African-American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; the National Trust for Historic Preservation and at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.
His project began as The Slave Cabin Project, and he expected it to last a year in which he spent a night in various slave cabins across South Carolina. However, it did not take long for him to realize that the enslaved were not limited to cabins on the large plantations of the South. They also inhabited quarters in urban areas and in states as far north as New England, many in the Midwest and a few in the Northwest. In fact there were slave dwellings in every state east of the Mississippi River. And so his endeavor was renamed The Slave Dwelling Project. Soon, he was being invited to spend the night in dwellings in a number of different states, and he realized this was not just a year's endeavor, but a long-term project in which he could make tangible that places do matter.
In his book, he quotes Dr. Deborah Fripp: "Understanding the nuances in everyone's stories helps us avoid cardboard caricatures of complex people." And he also quotes Texan Donald Payton, who said, "You have to know your grannies and your great-grannies. You can't just go through life believing that you made yourself."
Through the Slave Dwelling Project and now in Sleeping with the Ancestors, Joe McGill is telling the stories of enslaved persons whose voices have been silenced for too long, and, in so doing, he is helping others to see, in the stories of those who have gone before, the importance of remembering the lessons their lives teach us all.
Joe McGill is scheduled to participate in the African-American Heritage Celebration of the opening of the African-American Archives of Williamsburg County on Saturday, June 24, at 2 p.m. at the Archives on Hampton Avenue in Kingstree.
And speaking of "knowing your grannies and your great-grannies," Sophia Alexander's paternal roots are deep in the Greeleyville area of Williamsburg County, and although her books are fiction, the stories and characters in them are loosely based on her Williamsburg County family, including grannies and great-grannies.
In Homespun, as in Silk and Tapestry, she follows the lives of Vivian and Gaynelle, the daughters of Silk's main character, Caroline, as they make their way through life in Williamsburg County from the early 20th century through World War II. But Homespun also introduces us to new characters, such as Zingle Caddell, who one reviewer writes, "doesn't regret the destruction left in his wake so much as he is annoyed by it." Zingle in a dark character, but like all good stories, things turn out in the end.
The author, in an interview, describes Homespun as the story of trouble lurking "in the guise of a family feud, forbidden love, and a journalist hell-bent on uncovering corruption."
She credits her obsession with genealogy and poking around at her family's murkier roots as the basis for the stories she developed into the series of three novels. She also notes that Homespun is less romantic than the two earlier novels, with more of a thriller edge.
To learn more about Silk, click here and for more information on Tapestry click here.
Born in South Carolina, Alexander now lives in Savannah, GA, but still spends time in Williamsburg County at her grandparents' old home. Her parents and sister live in Greeleyville. Her father was in the military, and she grew up in Germany, which will be the setting for her next novel.
