Memphis
Tara M. Stringfellow's debut novel opens in 1995, when ten-year-old Joan arrives at her grandmother's house in North Memphis with her mother and sister, fleeing her father. From there the book moves back to 1937 and forward again, tracing the North family through the generation of Joan's grandparents, parents, and her own coming of age as an artist. Stringfellow, who is also a poet, writes in short chapters narrated by different women across the decades. The house itself becomes a character, holding secrets, music, and the long shadow of segregation and police violence. Memphis is a family story rooted in a specific place and a long American story at the same time.
What you might want to know about Memphis
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Three generations of Black women in a Memphis house carry the joys and wounds of their family across seventy years of American history.
Jenna Bush Hager chose Memphis as the April 2022 Read with Jenna selection on the Today Show, praising Tara M. Stringfellow's poetic voice and the way the novel moves across generations of a Black Southern family.
Stringfellow has said the novel is inspired by stories from her own family's history in Memphis, though the characters and plot are fiction.
Memphis was written by Tara M. Stringfellow, published in 2022 by Dial Press.
Memphis is 288 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Memphis takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Memphis is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
