Mudbound is the debut novel by American author Hillary Jordan. It has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish and has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide. The novel took Jordan seven years to write.
Jordan’s indelible portrayal of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town earned the prestigious Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded biennially to a first literary novel that addresses issues of social injustice.
Set just after the end of World War Two in 1946, this is a harsh Southern novel that encapsulates the Jim Crow era. It is set in the Mississippi Delta on a cotton farm, where life is hard and the work is backbreaking, and the brown colour dominates the mudbound landscape.
MUDBOUND – THE FILMis a 2017 American historical drama film directed by Dee Rees and written by Rees and Virgil Williams, based on the 2008Mudbound is a 2017 American historical drama film directed by Dee Rees and written by Rees and Virgil Williams, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan. It stars Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Jonathan Banks, and Mary J. Blige.
Mudbound follows the intersecting lives of white landowners and black sharecroppers in post-World War II rural Mississippi. Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan, it spares none of the realities of the 1940s American South, showing the extreme racism of the time in chilling, often gory detail.
“Other studios were scared to touch it,” Rees said at the New York Film Festival last month, explaining why she ended up making it independently.
At the 90th Academy Awards, the film earned four nominations: Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song for Blige, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, the latter of which made Rachel Morrison the first woman ever nominated in the category.
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE TO WATCH