The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Johnson, Jocelyn Nicole. My Monticello. Henry Holt and Company, 2021.

Johnson’s book features five short stories and the novella “My Monticello” (62).

“Control Negro” (1) is written as a confession from a Black college professor named Cornelius Adams to his college-aged son. Adams informs the boy that he is his father, and that he has deliberately manipulated many facets of his life for the purpose of an experiment. After impregnating the boy’s mother, Adams arranged to be only involved in his son’s life to support him financially and to have a say in how he was raised. His intention was to determine whether it was possible for a young Black man to succeed in America given the right conditions. Adams eventually confesses that he called the police and directed them to a place where his son was drinking with other college students for the purpose of seeing whether they would single him out. Following this, his son was beaten by the police. Despite this turn of events, the narrator feels hopeful and proud of his son, seeing what he has accomplished in the face of oppression.

“Virginia Is Not Your Home” (16) is written by a narrator who resents her name and her home state of the same name, Virginia. The story is written in the second person, in the form of instructions the narrator gives herself for escaping her hometown and obtaining a new life. Through these instructions, it emerges that the narrator uses her study of the French language to advance her education and travel in Europe, finding a French husband. However, through circumstances involving her husband’s work, she ends up moving back to Virginia, where she raises her own children. Her father dies, her mother begins suffering from dementia, and she and her husband eventually divorce. In opposition to her original intentions, she is now a jobless single mother in her hometown, still dreaming of escape.

“Something Sweet on Our Tongues” (27) is told in the first-person plural by a group of elementary school boys who suffer from various kinds of deprivation due to their families’ precarious finances and a general lack of attention. They come to resent a boy in their school named Richard, an African immigrant who earns praise from teachers by reading voraciously. They allow Moses, a boy whose strength they admire, to convince them to attack Richard one day as they are leaving school.

“Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse” (40) is narrated in the second person by a woman nearing middle age who is instructing herself on how to buy a house near Richmond, Virginia. As the narrator attempts to make plans for homeownership, she is drawn back to her past and her regrets for the choices she has made. Her relationship with her now-adult daughter has suffered due to her previous relationship with the girl’s abusive father. By the end of the story, the narrator is telling herself to beg for her daughter’s forgiveness for the mistakes she has made.

“The King of Xandria” (46) is told by a third-person narrator who follows Mr. Attah, a Nigerian immigrant living in Alexandria, Virginia with his son, Alex, who is in middle school, and his daughter Justina, who works at an office supply store. They moved to Virginia after Mr. Attah’s wife was killed by a child suicide bomber. He is currently unemployed and embroiled in a disagreement with the administration at Alex’s school: The principal has been trying to tell him that Alex has a learning disability, but Mr. Attah is offended by this suggestion and refuses to accept it. When Alex himself explains that he is having trouble in classes, Mr. Attah finally agrees to approve an altered learning program for him. He is then struck by the feeling that his children no longer need him, but feels sustained and hopeful at the sight of some swans at the pond of the hotel where he used to work that he previously thought had disappeared.

“My Monticello” (62) is narrated in the first-person voice of Da’Naisha Hemings Love, a Black descendent of Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved mother of several of his children, Sally Hemings. Da’Naisha, her grandmother MaViolet, her white college boyfriend Knox, and several people from her neighborhood escape a white supremacist uprising and end up at Monticello, Jefferson’s historic home. Da’Naisha is pregnant after having had sex with Devin, a man from her neighborhood she dated as a teenager, and a member of the group at Monticello. Da’Naisha does not know who the father of her baby is and has not told anyone of her pregnancy.

Over the following weeks, the group establishes a community at Monticello, welcoming some others who arrive there to take refuge. Da’Naisha realizes that she has made the mistake of leaving a bag of inhalers belonging to MaViolet, who has asthma, back at home in the neighborhood. Knox and a white woman named Carol intend to return to town to see if it is safe, and Da’Naisha and Devin ride along with them in the trunk. On the road on the way there, they encounter members of the white supremacist militia that attacked their neighborhood. Shots are exchanged, Devin wounds one of the men, and they make their way back to Monticello on foot.

In their absence, the others have apprehended a Black man who claims to speak for the militia, warning them to leave Monticello within the next two days. Instead, they decide to stay and fight. Devin says Da’Naisha should tell Knox the child is his, as he believes she will have a better life with a white father. Da’Naisha tells Knox that she is pregnant and the two are overcome with emotion. MaViolet dies and Da’Naisha promises to name her baby Violet after her. The novella ends with Da’Naisha anticipating the militia attack, reflecting on how she and the rest of the group will be a part of history just as others before them.