Tayari Jones, an African American author now teaching at Emory University, has recently published her fourth novel, An American Marriage,about a young black man wrongly incarcerated and the wife who is left behind when he is sent to jail. I have long been a fan of Jones’ beginning with her compelling first novel in 2002, Leaving Atlanta, about three fifth graders set against the backdrop of the 1979-80 serial murders of black children. At the high school where I taught, I passed the novel around and soon my colleagues and I were enthusiastically offering it to students. It’s taken Jones 16 years and three more books to hit the big time. She joked that earlier author tours would involve cozy conversations with the 8 or 10 people who showed up for the book signing, but now that Oprah has chosen An American Marriageand the film rights have been sold, Jones is finally enjoying a wider audience. About 150 people sat in the small auditorium with me last Wednesday night at George Mason University as she read excerpts from her book, talked about the inspiration for the story and answered questions from enthusiastic readers.
Jones explained that she wanted to explore larger issues and 6 years ago went to Harvard for a year to study mass incarceration, a plague on the African American community in this country, in particular. One out of 4 men in Washington, D.C., she pointed out, will end up in jail or prison. She emerged from her year of study, armed with statistics and horrifying knowledge, particularly in regard to wrongful incarcerations, but she just couldn’t find a story. She says she realized that she needs to write about people and their problems and not vice-versa. The germ for the story presented itself when she was visiting her mother in Atlanta and she overheard a well-dressed couple arguing in the food court at the mall. “Roy, you know you wouldn’t have waited for me for seven years,” the woman said. The man responded, “This wouldn’t have happened to you in the first place.” Jones says she knew she had her story. The first draft of the novel was entirely from the wife, Celestial’s, point of view. But Jones wasn’t satisfied because she thought Roy, the husband, had a valid perspective that needed to be heard, and so she rewrote the whole book from his point of view. Then, she says, she realized that story had already been told, likening it to The Odyssey, in which Odysseus returns after a long absence expecting a wife who has been waiting loyally for him. The third incarnation of the book toggled between the two points of view and added a third one, that of Andre, Celestial’s lover.
An audience member asked her about the title and Jones shared that she did not initially like it. “It sounded,” she said, “like a story about rich white people in Connecticut with feelings.” Her editor kept insisting, but Jones said, “I’ve never been called ‘American’ without another word. African-American. Black American.” She conferred with her mentor, playwright Pearl Clegg, who told her it was indeed an appropriate title. “Your story could only happen in America.”
A phrase that Jones returned to several times as she fielded questions is “the tyranny of genre expectations,” something against which she rebels. For example, she explained, people see the set-up in her book and expect that everything will work out well in the end; the woman will stand by her man, wrongs will be righted. Celestial, she explains upsets our expectations because she’s not a sacrificial person. “It’s important to think about what we ask of women.” Several audience members expressed that they were both irritated for and by Celestial. “Look,” Jones counters, “Roy has this incredible moral high ground. How can you ever ask this man to take out the trash? “If stories are going to move us forward, we have to be unsettled.”
The publication of this novel and Jones’ book tour has coincided, for me, with several other works that bring different perspectives on the issues of incarceration in this country. I’m listening to season 3 of the podcast “Serial” researched and narrated by Sarah Koenig of NPR’s “This American Life.” Koenig spent a year at the Cleveland courthouse and each episode features a different aspect of the judicial system. It may sound dry but in actuality, it’s pretty compelling listening. I also listened to a NY Timesbook review podcast with a journalist for Mother Jonesnamed Shane Bauer who had been wrongly incarcerated himself – in Iran – for two years. He has a new book out, American Prison, that chronicles the four months he spent as a Louisiana prison guard and reveals what he discovered about the privatization of American prisons. It’s not a book I would have ordinarily considered reading, but his interview was so interesting, coupled with these other stories, I decided to buy it.
A word about the people who made my evening with Tayari Jones possible - Based at George Mason University, Fall for the Book is an independent, non-profit literary arts organization that promotes reading by sponsoring a variety of year-round events and activities, the flagship of which is the Fall for the Book festival held each October (fallforthebook.org). This year’s festival featured several headline speakers including Jones and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Next time, I’ll write about her.
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