CANR
WORK TITLE: An American Marriage
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1970
WEBSITE: http://www.tayarijones.com/
CITY: Jersey City
STATE: NJ
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 234
http://www.mfa.newark.rutgers.edu/faculty/jonestayarifacultypage.htm https://twitter.com/#!/tayari https://www.facebook.com/tayari
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 30, 1970, in Atlanta, GA.
EDUCATION:Spelman College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1991; University of Iowa, M.A., 1994; Arizona State University. M.F.A., 2000.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic and writer. University of Iowa, graduate instructor, 1992-94; Prairie View A&M University, faculty member, 1994-97; Arizona State University, graduate instructor, 1999-2000; East Tennessee State University, Geier writer-in-residence, 2003-04; University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, assistant professor of English, 2004—; Rutgers-Newark University, Newark, NJ, associate professor. Cultural Services Department, City of Tempe, AZ, public arts assistant, 2001; Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Harvard University, 2011-12; Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers, Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017-2018.
AWARDS:Martindale Foundation Award for Fiction, 2000; Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award, 2000; Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction; Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation scholarship, 2001; Ledig House International Writers Colony fellowship, LEF Foundation Award for African-American and Native-American Writers, Gerald Freund fellowship, MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, Jakobson fellow, Wesleyan Summer Writing Conference, and artist fellowship, Arizona Commission on the Arts, all 2002; professional development grant, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Fletcher Pratt fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Chateau de Lavigny International Writers Colony fellowship, all 2003; Legacy Award in the Category of Debut Fiction, Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Foundation, for Leaving Atlanta; College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni leader, Arizona State University, Walter E. Dankin fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference, and GE Fund residency, Corporation of Yaddo, all 2004; United States Artists Collins fellowship, 2008.
WRITINGS
Short stories published in anthologies, including Am I the Last Virgin?, edited by Tara Roberts, Simon & Schuster, 1997; Gumbo, edited by Marita Golden, Doubleday, 2002; Proverbs for the People, edited by TaRessa Stovall, Kensington Press, 2003; and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 2004, Algonquin Books, 2004. Creative nonfiction and literary criticism has appeared in Father Songs, edited by Gloria Wade Gayles, Beacon Press, 1997; Letters of Intent, edited by Meg Daly, Free Press, 1999; and Langston Hughes Review. Contributor of short stories to periodicals and journals, including Tin House, New York Times, Sou’wester, Crab Orchard Review, 64, Figdust, HealthQuest, and Catalyst.
Leaving Atlanta was adapted as an audiobook by Recorded Books (Prince Frederick, MD), 2003.
SIDELIGHTS
Tayari Jones is a novelist and short-story writer whose fiction often focuses on the urban South, where she grew up. In her critically acclaimed first book, Leaving Atlanta, Jones sets the scene in Atlanta during the 1979-81 period when a number of real-life African American children were murdered, many of them near the author’s home as a child. “This novel is my way of documenting a particular moment in history,” Jones noted on her home page. “It is a love letter to my generation and also an effort to remember my own childhood. To remind myself and my readers what it was like to be eleven and at the mercy of the world. And despite the obvious darkness of the time period, I also wanted to remember all that is sweet about girlhood, to recall all the moments that make a person smile and feel optimistic.”
In the novel, Jones tells the story of three inner-city children who go to the same elementary school and the effects that the murders in Atlanta have on them. Tasha struggles to fit in with the popular crowd at school. When another boy, who also does not fit in, expresses interest in her, Tasha seeks approval from the popular kids by announcing in front of her classmates that she wishes the killer would kill him, too. When the boy fails to show up for class, Tasha begins to fret that perhaps her words are more powerful than she thought. Rodney is bright but shy and, unlike Tasha, does not even try to fit in. His grades begin to fail and when his father comes and whips him in front of his classmates, Rodney is set on a confrontational path with someone who may be the killer. Octavia is also a misfit who is made fun of for being poor and having very dark skin. As the murders continue, Ocatavia’s father, who has had little to do with Octavia and lives in suburban South Carolina with his new family, calls to see if Octavia wants to come stay with him and escape the dangerous Atlanta area where she lives. Octavia, who excels in school, knows it is a good opportunity, but she debates leaving her mother behind even as a friend goes missing.
In a review of Leaving Atlanta on the Mostly Fiction Web site, Kam White noted that “throughout the book, there is little mention of any details of the actual murders that took place. Instead, we are allowed to explore the emotional relationships among the children and the effects that the disappearances of their friends have on them and the community.” Melissa Morgan, writing on the Bookreporter.com, commented that the author “effortlessly infuses each of the three children in her novel with their own unique voice … and through doing so creates the mood of an entire city.” A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author’s “strongly grounded tale hums with the rhythms of schoolyard life and proves Jones to be a powerful storyteller.” VeTalle Fusilier, writing in the Black Issues Book Review, commented that “this first novel by Jones is a work of great promise.” Vanessa Bush wrote in Booklist, that “Jones is as skillful at evoking the fear and anxiety of that horrendous summer as she is at recalling coming-of-age concerns.”
In her second novel, The Untelling, Jones tells the story of Aria Jackson, who, along with her mother, survived a terrible car accident that killed her father and baby sister. Psychologically scarred from the ordeal, Aria is struggling fifteen years later to make her life whole and find love while her mother has fallen apart and become a crack addict. Aria is unable to tell her boyfriend or other friends about this past experience, which eventually leads her to deeper feelings of guilt despite the altruistic work she does as a literacy instructor in Atlanta’s inner city. Furthermore, her secret tragedy also threatens any hope for happiness that she may have as it keeps others from fully understanding who she is and why.
Vanessa Bush, writing in Booklist, noted that the author “offers a delicate portrait of a young woman’s emotional fragility.” In a review in Library Journal, Maureen Neville called the book a “bittersweet second novel.” Black Issues Book Review contributor Nicole Shaw commented that the novel “will stir readers to evaluate the misfortunes of their own lives, and be resolved to the fact that life is what it is.” As a Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, “the first-person narration is convincing and genuine, and Jones handles her material with sensitivity and sympathy.”
Jones published her third novel, Silver Sparrow, in 2011. Set in middle-class Atlanta in the 1980s, the story centers on Dana Yarboro and the way that she deals with her bigamist father and his other family. Dana secretly befriends her half-sister, Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon, who is unaware of their relation. Dana also observes how her father attempts to manage his families and how her own mother struggles with her role in the puzzle and Dana’s future.
In an interview in Publishers Weekly, Rachel Deahl mentioned that “Jones’s characters don’t exist in the brutal, poverty-filled world of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones, the obese character in Sapphire’s 1996 debut novel, Push (and Lee Daniels’s 2009 film, Precious), nor are their lives lived in Cosby Show sumptuousness. Jones writes about characters who are, as Chaurisse puts it in Silver Sparrow, ‘as ordinary as scrambled eggs.’”
In a review in Washington Post Book World, Anita Shreve stated: “Populating this absorbing novel is a vivid cast of characters, each with his own story.” Shreve observed that “Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when. Occasionally, she inserts a spot-on Southern bon mot that might have been handed down from one generation to another.” Booklist contributor Leah Strauss commented that “Jones effectively blends the sisters’ varied, flawed perspectives as the characters struggle with presumptions of family.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly lamented: “Set on its forced trajectory, the novel piles revelation on revelation, growing increasingly histrionic and less believable.” A Kirkus Reviews critic lauded, however, that “Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader’s heart.”
An American Marriage tells the story of a relationship come undone by a wrongful accusation. Roy and Celestial began their relationship as they were both on their way to career success. Roy, a corporate executive, came from humble beginnings. Growing up in a working-class family in Louisiana, he dedicated himself to education as a way out of poverty, and earned himself a scholarship to Morehouse College. He is handsome, ambitious, and flirtatious, but dedicated to his new wife. Celestial comes from a more privileged background; her father is a self-made millionaire. As an alum of Spelman College, Celestial is finding success as an artist. Celestial is drawn to Roy’s sex appeal, appreciates his support of her art, but is wary of his flirtatious ways. After a year of marriage, the couple is considering buying a house and starting a family.
In the first section of the book, the narrative jumps between the perspectives of Ray and Celestial. As they tell their story, the tone of their narration becomes at times defensive, at other times apologetic. When the couple travels to Roy’s small Louisiana hometown for a visit, a shocking event begins a downward spiral in their lives. One evening while the couple is in their hotel room, they receive a knock at the door. It is the police, arriving to arrest Roy on charges of aggravated sexual assault upon an elderly woman staying a few rooms over. Roy is innocent, and Celestial knows this, but he is still convicted of the crime. Shocked, the couple must contemplate how they will manage through his twelve year sentence.
Ron Charles in Washington Post described the book as “a story about the unpredictable ways love ferments in the airless conditions of forced separation.” Once Roy goes to prison, the book takes the form of letters. The couple’s struggle to maintain their romance can be read in the letters, a means of communication that feels dated to both of them. Roy tries to joke on paper, as well as express his deep longing and sense of loneliness. As Roy spends his seemingly endless free time idolizing Celestial and their relationship, Celestial has the space to examine it, and him, and wonder if she ultimately wants to spend her life as his wife.
As the years pass, Celestial’s art career takes off. She begins sewing life-size dolls, some of whom are donned in prison garb, and all of whom resemble Ray. Ray learns of her successes through their letters, and experiences deeper loneliness and a sense of abandonment. While her husband is in prison, Celestial finds comfort in her childhood best friend, Andre. Andre has always been drawn to Celestial, and with Ray locked up, the two find a new sort of comfort in one another. With Ray’s long prison sentence on the back of their minds, they become lovers.
The story takes a turn when, after seven years, Ray is proven innocent and released from prison. Finding a different world from that which he left seven years earlier, Ray must adjust and accept the changes around him. Celestial, too, must decide if a life with Ray is now what she wants. As the three characters come to terms with betrayal, strained love, and justice, the narration returns to varying perspectives, now with Andre in the mix.
“Jones uses her love triangle to explore simmering class tensions and reverberating racial injustice in the contemporary South, while also delivering a satisfying romantic drama,” wrote a contributor to Publishers Weekly, while Leah Strauss in Booklist noted that the book is “made all the more resonant by her well-drawn characters and their intricate conflicts of heart and mind.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Black Issues Book Review, July 1, 2002, VeTalle Fusilie, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 38; March 1, 2005, Nicole Shaw, review of The Untelling, p. 51.
Booklist, August 1, 2002, Vanessa Bush, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 1920; March 15, 2005, review of The Untelling, p. 1265; May 15, 2011, Leah Strauss, review of Silver Sparrow, p. 18; September 1, 2011, Kaite Mediatore Stover, review of Silver Sparrow, p. 64; November 1, 2017, Leah Strauss, review of An American Marriage, p. 13.
Essence, April 1, 2005, “A Novelist to Watch,” p. 100.
ForeWord, April 29, 2011, Jessica Henkle, review of Silver Sparrow.
Internet Bookwatch, August, 2017, review of Atlanta Noir.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2002, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 830; January 15, 2005, review of The Untelling, p. 75; July 1, 2017, review of Atlanta Noir; December 1, 2017, review of An American Marriage.
Library Journal, September 1, 2002, Roger A. Berger, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 214; March 15, 2005, Maureen Neville, review of The Untelling, p. 72; February 15, 2011, Debbie Bogenschutz, review of Silver Sparrow, p. 99.
Poets & Writers, May 1, 2011, Rochelle Spencer, “She Is Ready,” p. 44.
Publishers Weekly, June 17, 2002, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 38; February 28, 2005, review of The Untelling, p. 40; February 7, 2011, review of Silver Sparrow, p. 33; June 13, 2011, Rachel Deahl, “Jones Stays with Algonquin,” p. 6; June 5, 2017, review of Atlanta Noir, p. 32; December 11, 2017, review of An American Marriage, p. 143.
School Library Journal, January 1, 2006, Pat Bangs, review of The Untelling, p. 172.
USA Today, February 7, 2018, Patty Rhule, “Heartbreak lures in ‘An American Marriage,'” p. 01D.
Washington Post Book World, August 18, 2002, review of Leaving Atlanta, p. 5; May 12, 2011, Anita Shreve, review of Silver Sparrow.
Washington Post, January 30, 2018, Ron Charles, review of An American Marriage.
ONLINE
AllReaders.com, http://www.allreaders.com/ (July 5, 2005), Harriet Klausner, review of Leaving Atlanta.
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (July 5, 2005), Melissa Morgan, review of Leaving Atlanta.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (May 1, 2011), Roxane Gay, author interview.
English Department University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Website, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/ (July 5, 2005), profile of author.
Mostly Fiction, http://mostlyfiction.com/ (February 10, 2003), Kam White, review of Leaving Atlanta.
Rutgers University, Newark College of Arts and Sciences Web site, http://mfa.newark.rutgers.edu/ (December 12, 2011), author profile.
Spellman University Website, http://www.spelman.edu/ (July 5, 2005), “Interview with Tayari Jones.”
Tayari Jones Website, http://www.tayarijones.com (December 12, 2011).
Novels
Leaving Atlanta (2002)
The Untelling (2005)
Silver Sparrow (2011)
An American Marriage (2018)
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Anthologies edited
Atlanta Noir (2017)
Q&A with Tayari Jones: The Author of Oprah’s Latest Book Club Pick
The novelist opens up about her process and her new novel ‘An American Marriage’
Q&A with Tayari Jones: The Author of Oprah’s Latest Book Club Pick
PHOTO: NINA SUBIN
By Thomas Gebremedhin
Feb. 7, 2018 1:48 p.m. ET
2 COMMENTS
IN 2009, four years after the release of her second novel, The Untelling, Tayari Jones found herself without a publisher. Her sales numbers were hardly strong—in fact, she says, she had become “radioactive.” “I was so depressed,” Jones, 47, says. At the time, she had begun work on a new novel, which would eventually become the best-selling Silver Sparrow. “The only reason I kept working on Sparrow was because I tell my students that you write a book for you and not your publisher. I couldn’t face them every day if I were to give up on that project.” She finally completed the manuscript with the help of a grant from the United States Artists; later, at a reading in Florida at the Key West Literary Seminar, an admirer came up to Jones to express outrage that she still didn’t have a publisher. The admirer introduced Jones to an executive at Algonquin Books, which would go on to publish Silver Sparrow and Jones’s latest book, An American Marriage. After inquiring about her novel, the executive asked, “But how do you know Judy?” Jones’s admirer had been none other than literary icon Judy Blume.
Q&A with Tayari Jones: The Author of Oprah’s Latest Book Club Pick
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ALGONQUIN BOOKS
The dogged determination and stick-to-itiveness that has defined much of Jones’s career is also typical of her characters. In An American Marriage, which Oprah Winfrey just selected as her next book club pick, Jones writes about Roy and Celestial, a bright young African-American couple whose lives are turned upside down when Roy is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The ways in which this tragedy shapes their relationship, moving them in surprising directions, is only the start of what’s in store for readers of this rich, complex novel. WSJ. spoke with Jones over the phone in anticipation of the book’s release on February 6.
WSJ: I want to begin first with Atlanta. The city is such a presence in your novel; it almost functions like another character. What was Atlanta like when you were growing up there, and how have you seen it change?
Tayari Jones: I often say that Atlanta is my natural habitat—I’m most myself when I’m home. It wasn’t until I left Atlanta, and started writing about it, that I realized how little the rest of the country knows about the city, or even the urban South. I live in Brooklyn, and whenever I tell people I’m from Georgia they act like I came up on the Underground Railroad. Our understanding of the South is so much a narrative of the past.
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WSJ. MAGAZINE
WSJ: When did you first decide to become a writer? Was there a moment when you said, “I can do this” or “I want to do this”?
TJ: Well, I had to get to the point where I was willing to do my M.F.A. [In 1998] I went to my first AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conference—at the time I was in a Ph.D. program [at the University of Georgia]—where I met this writer named Jewell Parker Rhodes. She ran the M.F.A. program at Arizona State University. She had seen the one little story I published in my life, and she said, “Come to Arizona. You need to study writing. I’ll be your mentor.” So I moved to Arizona to work with her on my book that I had just started (I sent her the first 25 pages I had of [my first novel] Leaving Atlanta). The whole thing went down in only two weeks.
WSJ: This is a good opportunity to segue into your practice as a writer. What does a productive day look like for you? What does your revision process look like?
TJ: I get up early and write. Drink a lot of coffee. I discover the story as I write. Revision depends on how much of a mess the book is. An American Marriage, my new book, required four top-to-bottom rewrites. I’m hoping that’s not a new part of my process!
WSJ: One element that provides for many moments of tension in An American Marriage is this contrast in the upbringings of Celestial and Roy, a recently married African-American couple. Their experiences as black people overlap, but they also diverge in many striking ways because of the class issue. Did this dynamic surprise you as you explored how their differences might bubble up in the novel?
TJ: When I was growing up in Atlanta it was a hyper-segregated town. I grew up in an all-black Atlanta. The distinction between people wasn’t race, it was class. We tend to think about people operating only in one zone at a time. You’re talking about race or you’re talking about gender or you’re talking about class. But I understood intersectionality before I knew there was a word called intersectionality. Even when you consider something like the Atlanta Child Murders, the subject of my first book, everyone remembers it as the murder of black children, which it was, but it was also about the murder of poor and working-class black children.
WSJ: It’s fascinating because you don’t really see that quality of intersectionality explored very often in contemporary fiction, at least not in my reading experience. It’s really interesting territory.
TJ: And you know black people have a lot of class mobility and class integration. There are studies that say most people never know anyone outside of their class, but, hello—for a black person that’s called family. We have a lot more fluidity in terms of class. That’s why Celestial says, “What white people call middle-middle class, black people call upper-middle class.” I just find it interesting. That’s a real conflict in my life, so when I got ready to write a book, I didn’t have to think about it.
WSJ: You’re quoted as saying that An American Marriage should not be read as a protest novel, but rather as “issue adjacent,” but it does directly confront this issue of wrongful incarceration, so I wonder in what ways do you distinguish it from a protest novel?
TJ: You know James Baldwin and Richard Wright fell out over this question. Even Ralph Ellison jumped into the fray. Wright was hurt because Baldwin wrote this piece [“Everybody’s Protest Novel”] about Native Son in which he said the novel was so interested in its issue that it forgot the nuances of personal experience. I was always taught as a writer that you should write about people and their problems, not about problems and their people. So, while I was outraged about what I learned about wrongful incarceration, I was not inspired by it.
WSJ: What kinds of materials were you engaging with in terms of research for this book?
TJ: I read The New Jim Crow a hundred times like everybody else. But this novel is not the musical [version of that book]. I didn’t novelize The New Jim Crow. The thing I found most engaging was a little-known book of oral histories of people who have survived wrongful incarceration called Surviving Justice. Most of the men interviewed were not hung up on the “wrongful” part of incarceration. They were more interested in the conditions of incarceration and how no one should be subject to this. I was impressed with that. It made me interested in writing this to try and concentrate more on this question of empathy. This novel hinges on that question. Even when he feels everything has been taken away from him, Roy comes to understand that your humanity lies in your ability to empathize with other people and that can never be taken away from you. You are never so much a victim that you do not have a responsibility to think about others.
Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the United States Artists, a philanthropic arts organization, as the United States Artists Foundation.
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University, she is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Tayari Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tayari Jones
TayariJones.jpg
Tayari Jones in 2010
Born November 30, 1970 (age 47)
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Occupation Novelist, professor
Genre American literature
Notable works Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow
Tayari Jones (born November 30, 1970 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American author and winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. She was educated at Spelman College, the University of Iowa and Arizona State University.
Contents
1 Education and career
2 Work
3 Bibliography
4 Awards
5 External links
6 References
Education and career
She started writing seriously at Spelman College, where she studied with Pearl Cleage, who published her first story, "Eugenics", in Catalyst magazine. Jones went on to University of Iowa, where she worked toward a Ph.D. in English, but she left after completing her master's degree. She also studied at The University of Georgia, where she worked with Kevin Young and Judith Ortiz Cofer. She left UGA to enroll in the MFA program at Arizona State University where she worked with Ron Carlson and Jewell Parker Rhodes.
Jones has taught creative writing at The University of Illinois and also at George Washington University, where she served as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Washington. She is now a member of the MFA faculty at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University.
Work
Jones with Lynne Tillman at the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival.
Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a three-voiced coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-81. This novel, which was written while she was a graduate student at Arizona State University, is based on the experience as a child in Atlanta during that period. It won the 2003 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction.[1] Aletha Spann of 30Nineteen Productions has purchased the film option for Leaving Atlanta.[2]
The Untelling is also set in Atlanta. Described in Publishers Weekly as Jones's "deep-felt second novel", the book examines how the protagonist comes to terms with the loss of key members of her family as a child before having to redefine herself all over again in her mid-twenties.[3][4] It was awarded the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2005.[5][6]
Silver Sparrow, Jones's third novel, was published by Algonquin Books in 2011. It was an American Booksellers Association number 1 "Indie Next" pick.[7]
An American Marriage, her latest novel, was published on February 6, 2018 by Algonquin. On the same day, Oprah Winfrey announced that An American Marriage would be a pick of Oprah's Book Club.[8][9][10] An American Marriage is about an African-American couple whose lives are shaken when the husband is arrested for a crime he did not commit.[11]
Bibliography
Leaving Atlanta. Warner Books. 2002. ISBN 9780446528306.
The Untelling (2005)
Silver Sparrow (2011)
An American Marriage (2018)
Awards
Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers (2000)
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction (2003)
Lillian Smith Book Award (2005)
United States Artists Collins Fellowship (2008)
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship (2011)
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University, she is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Black Mountain Institute Announces 2017-2018 Fellows
Writers will contribute to the cultural landscape at UNLV and the community.
ARTS & CULTURE | MAY 18, 2017 | BY UNLV NEWS CENTER
Media Contact: Karyn S. Hollingsworth, College of Liberal Arts (702) 895-2513
Poet Heather Winterer reads selections from her book "The Two Standards" during the Black Mountain Institute Alumni Reading Series
A novelist who is redefining Southern literature, an internationally acclaimed historian who wrote the manifesto for agnostics, and a novelist/investigative journalist who has covered stories from Los Angeles to Palestine will take up residencies at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute (BMI) for the international literary center’s 2017-18 season.
Tayari Jones, Lesley Hazelton and Ben Ehrenreich are the newest fellows in the Diana L. Bennett Fellowship program at BMI. The writers will join Hossein Abkenar, the Kenneth Barlow City of Asylum Fellow, currently in residence at BMI. The new fellows will introduce themselves to the community in September at the Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building.
“Stretching back to long-term residencies with Wole Soyinka and E.L. Doctorow, BMI has an illustrious tradition of bringing the best writers and intellectuals to enrich our community here,” said Joshua Wolf Shenk, BMI’s executive director and writer-in-residence. “This year brings another dazzling group of lyrical writers whose work is urgent and provocative.”
Each year, BMI offers the Bennett Fellowship to three critically acclaimed writers who, for one or two semesters, contribute to the cultural landscape of UNLV and the larger Las Vegas community. The program is named for entrepreneur and philanthropist Diana L. Bennett. Past fellows include: Walter Kirn (Thumbsucker, Up in the Air), David L. Ulin, Tom Bissell, Yelena Akhtiorskaya and Okey Ndibe.
The visiting fellows are:
Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018).Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones
Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she also has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. She is an associate professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.
Lesley Hazleton
Lesley Hazleton is a writer and psychologist, also called “The Accidental Theologist,” who explores the vast and volatile arena in which religion and politics intersect.Lesley Hazleton
Lesley Hazleton
And she does so as a resolute agnostic -- thus her latest book, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto. Hazleton reported from Jerusalem for 13 years, contributing to The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Harper's, The Nation, and other publications. She’s working on her 13th book and blogs at accidentaltheologist.com, casting "an agnostic eye on religion, politics, and existence." A repeat TED speaker, her talks have been viewed more than three million times.
Ben Ehrenreich
Ben Ehrenreich’s most recent book, The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine, based on several years of reporting from the West Bank, was selected as one of the best books of 2016 by The Guardian, The Economist, and the San Francisco Chronicle.Ben Ehrenreich
Ben Ehrenreich
He is also the author of two novels, Ether and The Suitors. His work has been published in the London Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Los Angeles, among other publications. In 2011 he was honored with a National Magazine Award.
Black Mountain Institute
The Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Carter Black Mountain Institute brings writers and the literary imagination into the heart of public life through innovative public programs, award-winning publications, and a diverse array of fellowships. BMI is part of the UNLV College of Liberal Arts, where it collaborates with prestigious graduate programs in creative writing. In fall 2018 the first students will enroll in a new track in literary non-fiction.
An American Marriage
Publishers Weekly. 264.51 (Dec. 11, 2017): p143.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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An American Marriage
Tayari Jones. Algonquin, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-61620-134-0
Jones (Silver Sparrow) lays bare the devastating effects of wrongful imprisonment in this piercing tale of an unspooling marriage. Roy, an ambitious corporate executive, and Celestial, a talented artist and the daughter of a self-made millionaire, struggle to maintain their fledgling union when Roy is sentenced to 12 years in prison on a rape charge he is adamant is false. Before Roy's arrest, the narrative toggles between his and Celestial's perspectives; it takes an epistolary form during his imprisonment that affectingly depicts their heartbreaking descent into anger, confusion, and loneliness. When Roy is proven innocent and released seven years early, another narrator is introduced: Andre, Celestial's lifelong best friend who has become very close to her while Roy has been away. Jones maintains a brisk pace that injects real suspense into the principal characters' choices around fidelity, which are all fraught with guilt and suspicion, admirably refraining from tipping her hand toward one character's perspective. The dialogue--especially the letters between Roy and Celestial--are sometimes too heavily weighted by exposition, and the language slides toward melodrama. But the central conflict is masterfully executed: Jones uses her love triangle to explore simmering class tensions and reverberating racial injustice in the contemporary South, while also delivering a satisfying romantic drama. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"An American Marriage." Publishers Weekly, 11 Dec. 2017, p. 143. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521875906/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0a0b3527. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A521875906
Jones, Tayari: AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
Kirkus Reviews. (Dec. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Jones, Tayari AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE Algonquin (Adult Fiction) $26.95 2, 6 ISBN: 978-1-61620-134-0
A look at the personal toll of the criminal justice system from the author of Silver Sparrow (2011) and The Untelling (2005).
Roy has done everything right. Growing up in a working-class family in Louisiana, he took advantage of all the help he could get and earned a scholarship to Morehouse College. By the time he marries Spelman alum Celestial, she's an up-and-coming artist. After a year of marriage, they're thinking about buying a bigger house and starting a family. Then, on a visit back home, Roy is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Jones begins with chapters written from the points of view of her main characters. When Roy goes to prison, it becomes a novel in letters. The epistolary style makes perfect sense. Roy is incarcerated in Louisiana, Celestial is in Atlanta, and Jones' formal choice underscores their separation. Once Roy is released, the narrative resumes a rotating first person, but there's a new voice, that of Andre, once Celestial's best friend and now something more. This novel is peopled by vividly realized, individual characters and driven by interpersonal drama, but it is also very much about being black in contemporary America. Roy is arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Louisiana, the state with the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the United States, and where the ratio of black to white prisoners is 4 to 1. There's a heartbreaking scene in which Celestial's uncle--Roy's attorney--encourages her to forget everything she knows about presenting herself while she speaks in her husband's defense. "Now is not the time to be articulate. Now is the time to give it up. No filter, all heart." After a lifetime of being encouraged to be "well spoken," Celestial finds that she sounds false trying to speak unguardedly. "As I took my seat...not even the black lady juror would look at me." This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story.
Subtle, well-crafted, and powerful.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jones, Tayari: AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A516024624/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f2a2c4b4. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A516024624
An American Marriage
Leah Strauss
Booklist. 114.5 (Nov. 1, 2017): p13.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
An American Marriage.
By Tayari Jones.
Feb. 2018. 320p. Algonquin, $26.95 (9781616201340).
Married for just over a year, Roy and Celestial are still navigating their new dynamic as husband and wife. Then their lives are forever altered when they travel to Roy's small Louisiana hometown for a visit, and Roy is falsely accused of a harrowing crime and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The strain on their relationship is intense during Roy's incarceration, especially once Celestial's career takes off while he struggles with loss and feelings of abandonment. Nearly halfway through Roy's sentence, his conviction is vacated. In the aftermath of his unexpected release, the couple must confront difficult questions about the choices they've made as well as the expectations of others. For Celestial, it means reconciling the relationship with her husband with that of a longtime friend turned lover. Roy, on the other hand, faces the complexities of a life he no longer recognizes. Jones (Silver Sparrow, 2011) crafts an affecting tale that explores marriage, family, regret, and other feelings made all the more resonant by her well-drawn characters and their intricate conflicts of heart and mind.--Leah Strauss
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Strauss, Leah. "An American Marriage." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2017, p. 13. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515382897/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=74fff8c6. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A515382897
Jones, Tayari: ATLANTA NOIR
Kirkus Reviews. (July 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Jones, Tayari ATLANTA NOIR Akashic (Adult Fiction) $15.95 8, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61775-537-8
The 14 new stories Jones (Silver Sparrow, 2011, etc.) gathers seek to expose "the rot underneath the scent of magnolia and pine" in thoroughly modern but oh-so-Southern Atlanta.Atlanta has its share, maybe more than its share, of prosperity. But wealth is no safeguard against peril. A Hollywood transplant finds that a mansion in Buckhead is far from a safe haven in Tananarive Due's "Snowbound." Neither is a high-rise condo next to Phipps Plaza in Kenji Jasper's "A Moment of Clarity at the Waffle House." Being married to a city councilman doesn't guarantee happiness in Alesia Parker's "Ma'am." And Jennifer Harlow's baby-faced killers reveal the evil that lurks even in serene, suburban Peachtree City in "The Bubble." Poverty, on the other hand, is a surefire path to misery. No one knows that better than the Jamaican transplant whose life in the United States has been a steady path downward in Gillian Royes' "One-Eyed Woman." Working in a no-tell motel is no bed of roses, as editor Jones demonstrates in "Caramel." Nor is selling beer in your backyard a path to glory in John Holman's "The Fuck Out." Social service agencies offer no help to the downtrodden in Anthony Grooms' "Selah." And turning a new leaf after your release from prison is a waste of time for the soiled hero of Brandon Massey's "The Prisoner." Better to seek salvation on the corner of McDaniel and Abernathy streets, like the hero of Daniel Black's "Come Ye, Disconsolate." Creepy as well as dark, grim in outlook, and murky of prose. Hints of the supernatural may make these tales more appealing to lovers of ghost stories than to the hard-boiled crowd.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jones, Tayari: ATLANTA NOIR." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497199733/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=edf6659d. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497199733
Atlanta Noir
Publishers Weekly. 264.23 (June 5, 2017): p32.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Atlanta Noir
Edited by Tayari Jones. Akashic, $15.95 trade
paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-61775-537-8
In the introduction to the Atlanta volume in Akashic's groundbreaking noir series, Jones admits that several of the 14 entries "are not, by any stretch, crime fiction." Still, these stories, most of them by relative unknowns, offer plenty of human interest. David James Poissaht's "Comet" effectively uses Stone Mountain as the setting for a boy and his father's climb to see Halley's Comet. In Brandon Masey's "The Prisoner," a parolee finds staying clean comes at a very heavy price. The plight of the homeless and the shortcomings of shelters are poignantly explored in Anthony Grooms's "Selah." In Jennifer Harlow's unsettling "The Bubble," two rich, bored high school girls plan a thrill murder that will bind them forever. A mentally disturbed neighbor's actions become more and more troublesome for an out-of-work school teacher in Sheri Joseph's edgy "Killjoy." Oddly, while all the tales have a Southern feel, none evokes Atlanta's past, such as the Civil War period. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Atlanta Noir." Publishers Weekly, 5 June 2017, p. 32. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495538317/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e73a3af6. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495538317
Oprah's newest book club pick: 'An American Marriage,' by Tayari Jones
Ron Charles
Washingtonpost.com. (Jan. 30, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
Full Text:
Byline: Ron Charles
The only thing more distressing than the size of America's prison system is its racist function. According to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites -- a situation that effectively disenfranchises black voters, permanently wrecks millions of families and endlessly perpetuates a class structure forged in the antebellum era.
Just how directly our modern penal institutions descended from American slavery was illustrated most recently in Jesmyn Ward's novel "Sing, Unburied, Sing," which won the National Book Award last fall. In a modern-day story that takes place during a road trip to and from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Ward dips back into the history of Parchman Farm, where armed guards once oversaw prisoners -- some merely children -- sentenced to plantation labor.
Tayari Jones's new novel, "An American Marriage," makes a surprising companion to "Sing, Unburied, Sing." Her African American characters would seem to inhabit a different world: They're college-educated, gainfully employed, upwardly mobile; they haven't been flailed by poverty or caught by the hooks of addiction. But they are black, and in America, that fact trumps everything else. The justice system that rips apart their lives is the same one that ruins the desperate family in Ward's novel.
"An American Marriage" opens early in the marriage of Roy Hamilton and Celestial Davenport. Roy is an ambitious, handsome man with a bit of a wandering eye, but he's devoted to Celestial and determined to support her the way her wealthy parents did. Celestial, meanwhile, is drawn to Roy's sexy demeanor but suspicious of his fidelity. Although she's grateful for his encouragement of her nascent art business, she's sensitive to his condescension. Like any young couple, they're figuring out who they are and how their household will work.
"I know that there are those out there who would say that our marriage was in trouble," Roy says. "People have a lot of things to say when they don't know what goes on behind closed doors, up under the covers, and between night and morning. But as a witness to, and even a member of, our relationship, I'm convinced that it was the opposite."
In the story that unfolds, we become another witness to this relationship, but that only gives us a fuller sense of the essential mystery of marriage and of the truism that no marriage takes place in a vacuum. Each character speaks directly to us, alternating chapter by chapter, as though Roy and Celestial are pleading for our understanding -- and our forgiveness. But Jones offers no clear lines of culpability here, which is what makes "An American Marriage" so compelling.
Roy and Celestial are married just a year when police burst into their hotel room and arrest Roy for aggravated sexual assault of an old woman down the hall. Celestial knows -- just as we do -- that Roy is innocent, but he's convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. In that moment, the marriage that Roy and Celestial had begun building and the future they had imagined for themselves collapse.
Jones makes a series of daring creative choices in this, her fourth novel. "An American Marriage" isn't a story in which our racist system of justice is the dramatic focus of the plot; that system is simply the toxic landscape these characters inhabit. When Roy says, "What happened to me could happen to anybody," his best friend shoots back, "You think I don't know that? I been black all my life." Similarly, the violent attack in the hotel, Roy's botched trial, the efforts to win his release, and especially his ordeal while incarcerated all could have provided material for an exciting if familiar literary thriller. But Jones has chosen to minimize those elements for something intimate and introspective: a story about the unpredictable ways love ferments in the airless conditions of forced separation.
For 50 pages, Roy and Celestial stop speaking directly to us and, instead, write letters to each other. Jones makes the most of the epistolary form, which was once so common in novels. Both Roy and Celestial feel the awkwardness of this antique mode. They struggle self-consciously with the mechanics of articulating their thoughts on paper. Roy, particularly, shifts erratically from strained jokes to naked expressions of longing:
"This love letter thing is uphill for me," he writes. "I have never even seen one unless you count the third grade: Do you like me ___ yes ___ no. (Don't answer that, ha!) A love letter is supposed to be like music or like Shakespeare, but I don't know anything about Shakespeare. But for real, I want to tell you what you mean to me, but it's like trying to count the seconds of a day on your fingers and toes."
Prison creates such asymmetrical conditions for married people. Roy has lots of empty time to idealize his relationship with Celestial, but she has just as much time to reconsider who Roy really is and how she wants to spend her life.
"Dear Roy," she writes early in his incarceration, "I'm writing this letter sitting at the kitchen table. I'm alone in a way that's more than the fact that I am the only living person within these walls. Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn't possible. Maybe that's what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future."
As Roy and Celestial move into that painful future, Jones forces us to consider what they really owe each other. Roy imagines that a man in his position "should receive some sort of special consideration" -- both a license to cheat and an extra claim on his wife's affections. But what really are the boundaries of Celestial's responsibilities? Must she provide unwavering devotion sufficient to compensate for a prejudiced culture? Or is she just as free as any other woman to fall out of love, to reject a life that chance and racism have conspired to draw for her?
These are punishing questions, but they're spun with tender patience by Jones, who cradles each of these characters in a story that pulls our sympathies in different directions. She never ignores their flaws, their perfectly human tendency toward self-justification, but she also captures their longing to be kind, to be just, to somehow behave well despite the contradictory desires of the heart.
Ron Charles is the editor of Book World.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Charles, Ron. "Oprah's newest book club pick: 'An American Marriage,' by Tayari Jones." Washingtonpost.com, 30 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525688102/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9af3ee57. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525688102
Heartbreak lures in 'An American Marriage'
Patty Rhule
USA Today. (Feb. 7, 2018): Lifestyle: p01D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Patty Rhule, Special to USA TODAY
Celestial and Roy are still newlyweds when a visit to Roy's hometown in small-town Louisiana ends with Roy wrongly accused of rape.
Tayari Jones' brilliant, heartbreaking novel An American Marriage (Algonquin, 306 pp., ****) -- announced Tuesday as the latest Oprah's Book Club selection-- exposes the intimate toll of an American shame: the unjust imprisonment of black men. Marriage uncovers the truths that are revealed in the nearly invisible cracks that emerge in relationships, and the devastating harm in secrets of omission.
Roy is an up-and-coming business executive in Atlanta, a Morehouse man who thinks he married up. Celestial is the artistic daughter of a scientist-inventor and his wife.
Roy and Celestial are smitten -- really, they are, they tell themselves. Yet Roy collects -- and Celestial finds -- phone numbers from other women. Celestial turns to her childhood best friend, Andre, when she argues with Roy. Apropos of her name, Celestial is the center of each man's universe.
Jones (Silver Sparrow) alternates chapters among the three, and the reader's sympathies shift with each new revelation. Celestial and the imprisoned Roy exchange raw letters that pulse with anguish and yearning. Andre's self-deprecating asides have the wisdom of Buddhist koans.
While Roy serves his time, Celestial sews life-size dolls. She dresses a doll in prison blues as a political statement. Andre, ever aware he is a secondary planet in Celestial's orbit, notices that all the dolls look like Roy.
Celestial and Dre become lovers, and her disappointed father blames himself for treating her as a princess. Dre's father warns him to leave another man's wife alone -- this from the man who abandoned Dre's mother for another woman. Roy's father turns to mild subterfuge to help his son win Celestial back.
With spare and shimmering prose that can strike with the shock of a shiv, Jones captures the life-altering losses Roy and Celestial endure in this unforgettable American marriage.
CAPTION(S):
photo Victoria Will
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Rhule, Patty. "Heartbreak lures in 'An American Marriage'." USA Today, 7 Feb. 2018, p. 01D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526792418/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d3911c6e. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526792418
Atlanta Noir
Internet Bookwatch. (Aug. 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Atlanta Noir
Tayari Jones, editor
Akashic Books
232 Third Street, #A115, Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.akashicbooks.com
9781617755378, $15.95, PB, 280pp, www.amazon.com
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies with the publication of "Atlanta Noir". Each book in this outstanding series comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Compiled and edited by Tayari Jones, "Atlanta Noir" is comprised of fourteen original noir short stories deftly organized into three major sections: The Devil Went Down to Georgia; Kin Folks & Skin Folks; Nose Wide Open. All of these original and inherently fascinating tales are set in particular city of Atlanta settings ranging from Grant Park, to Cascade Heights, to East Lake Terrace. An absolute 'must' for dedicated mystery fans, and making an enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that, like all Akashic Books titles in their Noir series, "Atlanta Noir" is also available in a digital book format ($10.30).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Atlanta Noir." Internet Bookwatch, Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504053905/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=573898d4. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504053905