The Joneses Image by Vimeo
Coastal elites, we have been told recently, need to pay more attention to rural, white America. Fine, let them watch Moby Longinotto’s documentary, “The Joneses,” set in the trailer parks and small-town churches of very red, working-poor Mississippi and focusing on a transgender grandmother. Jehri Jones, 73 and divorced, shepherds her hard-luck family (two of her sons are disabled) through depressions both economic and psychological. The family is also wrestling with decades-old scars — while Jheri was transitioning, her ex-wife shut her out of their children’s lives for seven years. “The Joneses” is as sweet and sad as a melted ice cream cake, but its bleakness is leavened by Jheri’s simple joy in her body and by the family’s earnest desire to care for itself: Think “Transparent” without the decadence or narcissism.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
