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Ayana Mathis

Biography

Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis' first novel, THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE, was a New York Times bestseller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. and has been translated into 16 languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica and Rolling Stone. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was born in Philadelphia and currently lives in New York City where she teaches writing in Hunter College’s MFA Program.

Ayana Mathis

Books by Ayana Mathis

The Unsettled
by Ayana Mathis - Fiction

Bonaparte, Alabama --- once 10,000 glorious Black-owned acres – is now a ghost town vanishing to depopulation, crooked developers and an eerie mist closing in on its shoreline. Dutchess Carson, Bonaparte's fiery, tough-talking protector, fights to keep its remaining 1,000 acres in the hands of the last five residents. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, her estranged daughter, Ava, is drawn into Ark --- a seductive, radical group with a commitment to Black self-determination in the spirit of the Black Panthers and MOVE, with a dash of the Weather Underground’s violent zeal. Ava’s 11-year-old son, Toussaint, wants out. His future awaits him on his grandmother’s land, where the sounds of cicada and frog song might save him if only he can make it there.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
by Ayana Mathis - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In 1923, 15-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave.