Charmaine Wilkerson’s Good Dirt is a tale of family, loss and legacy.
two domestic scenes are rendered in heartbreaking clarity – the first, of a family portrait being taken around a 174-year-old treasured heirloom; the second, shortly after, a harrowing home invasion robbery which leaves a 15-year-old boy murdered and the heirloom destroyed.
Along with her parents, both of whom are black, she has been forced to be “organised and disciplined” in her grief, while exhaustingly trying to run away from the label: “Little black girl who had survived a suburban tragedy”. But as is universally acknowledged, the further we dash from our problems, the faster they encroach upon our consciousness. In France, Ebony’s memories of her brother’s death resurface as she attempts to write down the stories associated with the family heirloom, familiarly named “Old Mo”, a 20-gallon ceramic stoneware jar that was produced by her ancestors who worked as enslaved craftsmen in South Carolina. The jar has been in the family for six generations.
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