What We're Reading: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
麻豆影视
鈥淎tlanta is where I learned the rules and learned them quick. No one ever called me stupid. But home isn鈥檛 where you land; home is where you launch. You can鈥檛 pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.鈥 --Roy Othaniel Hamilton Jr in An American Marriage
Roy and his wife Celestial are a young, attractive, highly-educated African American couple on the way to living their dreams in Atlanta-- he as a rising executive and she as a folk artist dollmaker. Then they find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Roy is arrested and convicted of rape, shattering their world. What will their marriage become after Roy鈥檚 incarceration, and can it possibly survive?
This book was read by Susan Baker, Main Campus Librarian.
Title: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Genre: Realistic, contemporary fiction
: A book recommended by 麻豆影视 Library staff, A book About social justice or equity, A book about family
This book was read by Susan Baker, Main Campus Librarian.
Why did you choose to read this book?
I heard about this book listening to librarian Courtney Bippley's Out Loud in the Library (if you haven鈥檛 heard it, stop what you鈥檙e doing and listen now!). I was immediately engaged by the author and wanted to hear her stories, so I went looking for her work.
An American Marriage was an in 2018, so it鈥檚 gotten a lot of buzz. As a bonus, it鈥檚 available as an e-book via our Yep, I鈥檓 in!
What did you like about it?
For me, this was a compelling story because the reader enters so deeply into the minds and hearts of the narrators. Tayari Jones skillfully shifts points of view between Roy and Celestial, using the first-person narration from letters they send each other while Roy is in prison, later moving to their firsthand accounts, and adding in a third narrator鈥擜ndre, a childhood friend of Celestial鈥檚 and a college friend of Roy鈥檚, who has always loved Celestial. This was in no way a suspenseful courtroom drama a la John Grisham鈥攊t is completely clear from the beginning that Roy was innocent, and his conviction is presented in a very straightforward, as the way things can happen.
This is certainly a story that highlights racism and injustice, but the heart of the story centers on intimacy-- relationships between the characters鈥攚ho they were and are, what they mean to each other and what they owe each other. No spoilers鈥攋ust a promise that this is a story that grabs your heart as it opens your eyes.
Did it remind you of anything else?
If Toni Morrison鈥檚 works speak to you, if having African American voices fitting hard truths into language of feeling and poetry and connection sounds like a story that could speak to your mind and heart, then you just might want to spend some time with An American Marriage and other works by Tayari Jones.
Because Roy and Celestial meet at Spelman College in Atlanta, also the alma mater of Tayari Jones, I'd pair this book with a Spelman tradition, .
And I鈥檒l add both beer and champagne, since that makes me think of the differing backgrounds of Roy and Celestial, and also because why not?? Read and enjoy.