Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Twelve Tribes of Hattie | 2012 | Ayana Mathis | Buy |
| 2 | A Violent Woman | 2022 | Ayana Mathis | Buy |
| 3 | The Unsettled | 2023 | Ayana Mathis | Buy |
Mathis’s novels center on Black families navigating the aftershocks of the Great Migration and the broken promises of American life. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” covers decades of one family’s history in a series of linked chapters, each revealing a different facet of what it means to build a life far from home.
“The Unsettled” (2023) shifts to the 1980s, telling a story about a mother and son caught between a crumbling city and a utopian community in the rural South. Both books share Mathis’s ability to render complex family dynamics with clarity and compassion, and her interest in the spaces between hope and reality.