Giving a Voice to the Ancestors
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More than thirty years ago, I started writing a novel based on the lives of my Great-Grandparents, Charity and Joshua. The novel that I began writing was a romanticized version of the lives of a former slave woman and a white man who had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. I was extremely busy with graduate school and two children. I also realized that the climate was not right politically for such a book. I put it aside but never forgot it. One Sunday in March 2000, I drifted off while my minister was preaching a sermon that I had heard many times before. The spirit of Charity came and whispered, "When are you going to write the book? I want my story told, but truthfully as it happened." Then I felt Grandma Martha’s presence. She was my paternal –
During one recent summer, after an extended period of drought, the bed of the O’Conee River in Milledgeville, Georgia turned into dried out red clay. It was hard to believe that for years, and just months before, the O’Conee had flown a swollen, sullen yellow, ebbing to the very top of the banks, and providing enough fish to feed many of the poor black families living along River Hill. Just when it appeared that the O’Conee had nothing left to give, along came some archaeologists who engaged in a dig of the dry river bed and turned up bones of Cherokee Indians who inhabited the area before they were annihilated by the white man more than a century before. When I heard about that, I wondered how many of those bones belonged to my Cherokee ancestors. In 1987, I returned to Milledgeville for a high school re-union. Some of the alumni went to a historical cemetery where they found unnamed grave markers in the section reserved for slaves prior to 1865. These graves were easily identifiable by circles representing chains on the headstones. Each chain represented the number of years the slave had served his or her master. I wondered if any of these graves held remains of my African ancestors. I don’t recall seeing or hearing about any artifacts relating to my white ancestors (Irish and English). I wondered why.
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About the Book
The book is considered fiction, although it is based on the lives of the author's ancestors. Five year-old Emily (Bay-Chile), growing up in rural central Georgia in 1940, becomes curious about color differences within her family and questions her talkative great-aunt and grand-parents. Through numerous inquiries, she learns that her great-grandfather, Josh Ellis, fought with the Confederate Army in the Civil War while her great-grandmother, Charity was a slave. The two met after the Emancipation of the slaves and lived in a loving relationship until his death, raising seven children together. Further explorations connect the child to the lives of Charity's mother, Ansacka, a mulatto slave woman who conceived Charity through a forced relationship with the slave master; another great-grandmother, Martha, whose parents escaped into the mountains of Georgia to avoid the forced march of the Cherokee from Georgia to Mississippi, becomes enthralled by Troupe Allen, a white man who deserts her just before the birth of their son. Great-great-grandma Judy, among the last of the slaves imported from Africa tells her story .The progress of the descendants, spanning five generations, is traced following the Reconstruction Period through World War II, with some notable achievements. Broader issues include white/black kinship ties in the antebellum and post-bellum South, race relations, intra-racial color conflict, and blended families. Historical events occurring during the lifetimes of the author's various ancestors are superbly blended within the story. The story illustrates the devastating effects of racism on the human spirit as well as the ability to press onward despite adversity.
About the Author
Emily Allen Garland has had a passion for writing since she was a child. She completed her first book, Giving a Voice to the Ancestors, in March 2001. Mrs. Garland has published professional articles in the Child Welfare Journal, NABSW Journal, and the Detroit News Sunday Magazine. Garland holds a masters degree in social work from Wayne State University and has completed post-graduate training at the University of Michigan and University of North Carolina. She has many years of experience in the field of social work including direct practice, supervision, management, and agency administration. From 1972 through 1997, she developed and led the Lula Belle Stewart Center in Detroit, a premiere agency providing services to pregnant and parenting adolescents. The Center was recognized as a national model and was cited in the Reagan Administration publication, Up From Dependency as one of the most effective programs in America. Garland has also worked as an Associate Professor at the Wayne State University School of Social Work. In addition to creative writing, she currently works as a program and grant-writing consultant and is enrolled in a creative writing class. Garland spent the first six years of her life with her grandparents who provided much of the oral history necessary to develop her book. She has spent the last two years engaged in research of census data, public documents, and interviews to support the oral history on which the story rests. Garland, a world traveler, makes her home in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit