Slavery’s long reach meets the present
The Revisioners Margaret Wilkerson Sexton Counterpoint
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s new novel, The Revisioners, spanning more than 160 years, begins in present-day New Orleans and questions the presumptions of our self-satisfied social progress. The narrator, Ava, is a biracial single mother trained as a paralegal but between jobs. She accepts an invitation from her white grandmother to move into the old woman’s mansion and work as a companion.
Although their arrangement seems convenient, it’s fraught with unacknowledged tensions. Ava’s grandmother is a wealthy woman used to being waited on. In her confused moments, her mind slips back to an era much more openly racist. She’s an emblem of a nation determined to be gracious and think the best of itself but still capable of shocking outbursts of hatred.
Ava underestimates the influence of this setting: The house and everything about the way it functions silently confirm the hierarchy of employers and servants, whites and blacks. Sexton explores these tensions brilliantly. Ava takes comfort in the memory of her greatgreat-grandmother, a woman named Josephine who survived slavery and went on to own her own farm. Alternate chapters bring those years to us in Josephine’s voice. We hear from her as an enslaved child in 1855 and as a businesswoman in 1924. That structure is complex, particularly for such a relatively compact novel, but Sexton writes with such a clear sense of place and time that each of these intermingled stories feels essential and dramatic.
In the most distant storyline, young Josephine is a girl caught in the dehumanizing demands of plantation life. Meanwhile, outside the master’s house, Josephine is introduced to the spiritual work of the Revisioners, a subversive group of slaves who pray and sing and even foresee the future.
In 2014, Josephine is a faded ancestor but her spirit hovers over Ava — and the novel. The line stretching from Ava back to Josephine and beyond connects a collection of women attuned to danger, quick to adapt and hopeful about the future. Washington Post