Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

by Clarence Earl Walker

Book Overview

The debate over the affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings rarely rises above the question of "Did they or didn't they?" But lost in the argument over the existence of such a relationship are equally urgent questions about a history that is more complex, both sexually and culturally, than most of us realize. Mongrel Nation seeks to uncover this complexity, as well as the reasons it is so often obscured.

Clarence Walker...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813927781
• ISBN13: 9780813927787
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

America's Mom and Dad

I wouldn't usually read a historical treatise such as Mongrel Nation, but this found it's way to me and I was immediately hooked. Walker is forthright, provocative, and sometimes ribald in his argument that our nation's history has been whitewashed by our refusal to confront our mixed race beginnings. If you're looking for a concise, yet thorough, piece on what looking the other way has done to this country and its peoples, both in terms of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings's long term (and long denied) relationship and the larger historical role it played in our misguided concept of race, this is your book. Any book that suggests that were a movie to be made of the Jefferson/Hemmings relationship, it should star Meg Ryan as Hemmings, and then be able to back it up with credible evidence is an eye opener. A great read, and one that nudges along a conversation we've really only just started, and it's long past due.