An
American Marriage by Tayari Jones has been getting great
reviews all year long. There’s even a rumor that it’s going to be made into a
movie!
The author indicated that she wanted to write a book
underscoring the problems of an unfair justice system and mass incarceration,
but she wanted to do it from the point of view of a story. The story she created describes what happens in the marriage
of Celestial and Roy, when Roy is unjustly convicted of a crime and sentenced
to prison. Celestial and Roy are
well-educated and modernly upwardly mobile. Although the couple’s home is in Atlanta, they
have traveled to a small town in Louisiana to visit Roy’s parents. It’s here,
at the one-star hotel (the only hotel in town,) where their troubles
begin.
It just so happens that a prison in Louisiana is featured
last book we discussed, Sing Unburied
Sing by Jesmyn Ward. In Sing Unburied
Sing the prison is the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. The characters are
rural and poor, whereas in An American
Marriage, Roy and Celestial’s parents may have struggled in their early
years, Celestial’s parents are now wealthy and Roy’s parents seem to be doing
well.
Tayari Jones said she wanted to write a book that
although features the male as the main character; she wants the female
character to be multi-dimensional. Even
though it’s Roy who goes to prison, the situation becomes a prison for
Celestial as well. In The Atlantic article
quoted below Jones credits Toni Morrison for showing how a novel about a male,
in this case Song of Solomon, can
force that male to see the female
characters, to discover empathy for the female characters so that they can be released from their roles as invisible servants
to the male. Amazingly, the author received sharp criticism for not portraying Celestial
as standing by her man.
Writing
a Feminist Novel with a Man's Point of View by Joe Fassler Mar. 2018
The author Tayari Jones explains what Toni Morrison’s Song
of Solomon taught her about the centrality of male protagonists in
stories that explore female suffering.
“As I wrote An American Marriage, I was frustrated because I did not want to make Roy, my male
character, so central. The first time, I wrote it all the way through from the
point of view of Celestial, his wife. I was interested in the expectations of
femininity and domesticity, the way that a black woman whose husband is
wrongfully incarcerated—this archetypal racial problem—would behave. What is her
role in supporting him? What does it mean to be a wife?
I knew that would necessarily mean that, for Celestial, any decision other than
organizing her life around his comfort would be considered treasonous.
As I wrote, sometimes even speaking about this topic seemed
treasonous. At a party, I ran into a black man who’s a friend of mine, and he
asked me what I was working on. I told him I was writing a novel about a woman
whose husband is wrongfully incarcerated. He said, “Oh, it’s about how she’s
fighting to get him out.” I said, “It’s about a lot of things. And she doesn’t
actually ‘wait’ for him in the traditional sense.” He jerked away from me. Just
even imagining Roy’s story as anything other than the center caused him to
physically recoil.”
___________________________________________________________________
In spite of what the
author explained in the above article, I still had the feeling that Celestial
was immature and not fully committed. Could it be that I have been so
brainwashed by systemic patriarchy that even as a woman, I’m not really on
Celestial’s side? In Celestial’s defense though, I have to say that she did
find another woman’s phone number in his pocket. They’re both pretty immature.
One thing I wanted to say
about the title, and I mentioned this to a fellow reader, is that that I
thought An American Marriage applied
to Big Roy and Olive’s marriage, a marriage that is an example of what marriage
ought to be. I see now that the title refers to this uniquely American system
in which an African American husband can be unjustly snatched from his wife,
regardless of guilt or innocence. I understood completely how Celestial was
unable to speak plainly in front of the jury and how these small town southern
members of the jury resented her pronunciation and vocabulary.
p.39 “Uncle Banks, coaching me, said, Now is not the time to be articulate.
Now is the time to give it up. No filter, all heart. No matter what you’re
asked, what you want the jury to see is why you married him. I tried,
but I didn’t know how to be anything other than “well-spoken” in front of
strangers….As I took my seat beside Andre, not even the black lady juror would
look at me.”
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