Da'Naisha Hemings Love

Da’Naisha is the main character and first-person narrator of “My Monticello” (62). She is a descendant of Sally Hemings, the enslaved mother of several of Thomas Jefferson’s children. Her tie to this ancestry deepens after she, along with her boyfriend Knox, her grandmother MaViolet, and some neighbors from her previous home on First Street, takes refuge on Jefferson’s estate of Monticello.

Throughout “My Monticello,” Da’Naisha grapples with the fact that she is pregnant and does not know who the father is, as she has had sex with a previous boyfriend from her teenage years — a man named Devin who is among the First Street group — since beginning a relationship with Knox. She has not told Knox that she had sex with Devin, and keeps the pregnancy a secret, feeling doubts about how to handle it, though she eventually finds out that Devin already...