Shelf Awareness
"Robinson is not only exploring what it means to be black. His theme of knowing the past before planning the future applies to all cultures, all people. Pick up this odyssey of family drama, history and love, and be prepared to consider your own beginnings."
New York Journal of Books
"Makeda is beyond ambitious and imaginative . . . well written and powerful, with an ending that is equal parts tragic and romantic in nature . . . a breathtaking revelation, weighted with romance and lovely passionate prose.
"
Essence
"Hypnotic . . . one of the finest novels this year . . . [Robinson] is a gifted storyteller."
Library Journal
Gray Marsh is close to his blind grandmother, who entrusts him with stories of past lives she experiences in dreams. Her vivid dreams of a childhood in Africa include many facts that should be unknown to her, including customs, geographical features, and astronomical observations made by the Dogon people. Gray investigates these claims as he grows older and establishes himself in the academic community, and he comes to see himself and his grandmother as exceptionally connected to an African past. A journey to Mali predictably confirms not only the mystical details of his grandmother's visions but also the narrator's growing belief that he has been educationally shortchanged by the Western canon. VERDICT Robinson (The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks) attempts to craft a unique coming-of-age novel set in a racially divided America, but his story is flawed by repetitive and didactic passages that veer frequently into polemic. A controversial novel on history and race that may interest readers of African and African American history.—John R. Cecil, Austin, TX
SEPTEMBER 2012 - AudioFile
You wouldn't think a law professor would tell a story full of imagination from the perspective of a boy. But Randall Robinson is taking a new angle on his favorite nonfiction subject: the African-American experience in modern society. Kevin R. Free brings this melodic exploration of coming-of-age straight to the listener's ear in an honest, friendly narrative style. The conversational tone of Free's narrative and dialogue helps connect listeners to the protagonists, Makeda, a blind woman, and her grandson, Gray, and catch them up in what happens next. He provides touches of Southern accents, which he capably manages by sidestepping stereotypes. He also gives life to female characters as masterfully as he does males. M.R. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Through his grandmother Makeda, narrator Gray March finds much to love about his African—and his African-American—heritage.
For a time Gray has only known his blind and loving grandmother in her persona as Mattie March, a laundress for white families in Richmond, Va., but it turns out she has great depth to her soul. For one thing, her real name turns out to be Makeda, reflecting an African heritage that goes back generations. For another, she has dream-visions of past life experiences, one of the most notable being her memory as thedaughter of Ongnonlou, a 14th-century Dogon priest from Mali. Mattie/Makeda accepts these dreams as a matter of course, and as she spins out her past history to 15-year-old Gray, he becomes fascinated and writes down the details of her life as a Dogon girl. Most startlingly, the Dogon people are skilled astronomers who worship Sirius as well as some smaller, satellite stars...whose existence wasn't confirmed by astronomers until the late 20th century. (According to Robinson's postscript, this detailed astronomical knowledge of the Dogon is a mystery that has yet to be resolved.) Gray's fascination with his grandmother's story eventually leads him to Mali, and his research confirms the existence of Ongnonlou as well as geographical details of the landscape of which Makeda could obviously have no firsthand knowledge. Makeda also channels other past lives, in one of which she was a Jew and in another a Muslim, but her experience of having been raised Dogon over 500 years before dominates both her life and her grandson's.
Robinson writes with erudition about strange and wonderful matters.
