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A review by alliepeduto
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
4.0
A quick note before I get into the meat of this review. I’ve been a part of recent discussion regarding if novels like this one should be written by white authors. It’s a multilayered issue, and ultimately I come down on the side of whatever gets an individual to expand their boundaries. If your pathway in is through a white author, I think that is a fair starting point. For me personally, I read this after reading Kindred, and in my opinion Kindred is the gold standard for books set on historical plantations. I would recommend that next for anyone who is interested in reading beyond this novel.
Now for a little more backstory on how I ended up reading this: I love travel, but I have a compulsive need to be aware of the history that occurred in the locations I visit. It often makes me a real bummer to travel with, since in cities like Charleston, I can’t just sip cocktails and go shopping with girlfriends. I’m dragging people to museums and historic sites that focus on what happened to the enslaved workers who lived there as a way to promote that awareness. Shockingly it does not make me popular at parties.
But I can’t ignore it, and that is incidentally why I picked up this book as I was traveling to Mount Vernon for a long weekend near DC. In a hilarious a twist, it was Father’s Day, so I felt it was only fitting to explore the history a founding father of this messy but beautiful country. The site does a good job of not whitewashing despite maintaining the sense of Washington being a fairly nice human being for the era. But he was still a part of a system that systematically dehumanized Black enslaved workers, and that’s a problem.
With that elaborate backstory of why I chose this book at this time out of the way, I can say I enjoyed it. I think the author did a great job with her research (especially as I was comparing her story to a real life historical plantation), and I think it was smart of her to use an indentured servant as a way into the story, rather than trying to write an exclusively Black narrative. It added a layer of complexity to the storyline that was well developed and added a lens that I haven’t seen other stories attempt.
It was heart wrenchingly accurate for what women in particular would have experienced during that time, but it was ultimately a hopeful novel that doesn’t shy away from the horror and sadness. I really enjoyed it, and while I’m not sure I would read the sequel (which is about passing; I’m very interested in it but I have another novel, The Vanishing by Brit Bennett, that I intend to read first), I really enjoyed the added value I had from reading this when I did.
Now for a little more backstory on how I ended up reading this: I love travel, but I have a compulsive need to be aware of the history that occurred in the locations I visit. It often makes me a real bummer to travel with, since in cities like Charleston, I can’t just sip cocktails and go shopping with girlfriends. I’m dragging people to museums and historic sites that focus on what happened to the enslaved workers who lived there as a way to promote that awareness. Shockingly it does not make me popular at parties.
But I can’t ignore it, and that is incidentally why I picked up this book as I was traveling to Mount Vernon for a long weekend near DC. In a hilarious a twist, it was Father’s Day, so I felt it was only fitting to explore the history a founding father of this messy but beautiful country. The site does a good job of not whitewashing despite maintaining the sense of Washington being a fairly nice human being for the era. But he was still a part of a system that systematically dehumanized Black enslaved workers, and that’s a problem.
With that elaborate backstory of why I chose this book at this time out of the way, I can say I enjoyed it. I think the author did a great job with her research (especially as I was comparing her story to a real life historical plantation), and I think it was smart of her to use an indentured servant as a way into the story, rather than trying to write an exclusively Black narrative. It added a layer of complexity to the storyline that was well developed and added a lens that I haven’t seen other stories attempt.
It was heart wrenchingly accurate for what women in particular would have experienced during that time, but it was ultimately a hopeful novel that doesn’t shy away from the horror and sadness. I really enjoyed it, and while I’m not sure I would read the sequel (which is about passing; I’m very interested in it but I have another novel, The Vanishing by Brit Bennett, that I intend to read first), I really enjoyed the added value I had from reading this when I did.