Mapping "All Aunt Hagar's Children"
ArcGIS Maps Constructed by Ahmed Foggie
This map charts the specific addresses Jones references in All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Selecting a specific story the left hand side will reveal only those locations mentioned in that story. To the right is a color-coded legend with the exact name of each point on the map. Zoom in and out by using the plus and minus symbols. To reset the map view to the original setting, select the home icon.
Jones uses the constraints of a short story to his advantage by treating time as a fluid entity with which characters and narrators, through memory and imagination, travel forward and back in time order to give the reader a more well-rounded view of Black life in D.C. In "Tapestry", the narrator shares a peek at the main character’s future when he says, “Anne was not at all a morbid person, but it occurred to her quite simply that where ever it was she would die, it would not be in Mississippi. Within seconds of that thought, the train entered Washington, where she would come to her end more than sixty-eight years later…” (399). Without this insight, the reader would likely have felt a sense of incompleteness at the end of this story. Though the reader does not have the chance to see characters through the end of their lives, foreshadowing allows us a sense of closure.
Jones’ lax timelines and use of third-person narration create a universal interconnectedness within and across stories. In "Resurrecting Methuselah", the flexibility of time is used to move Anita between her past, present, and future to outline the expectations she had from life and contrast them to how they actually played out. While Jones’ use of time ties characters together, readers may have difficulty placing individual stories on a timeline. The data shows that the fourteen stories in the collection span from approximately 1901 ("In the Blink of God’s Eye") to 1988 ("Root Worker"), with most occurring in the 1950s and 60s. This information can aid the reader in understanding the contexts in which the characters operate, but while Jones is skilled at using time to his advantage, concrete dates are often not the intended focus.
