Tayari Jones Speaks About Race and Marriage at the Harvard Book Store

On Feb. 12, Tayari Jones, novelist and Professor at Rutgers University’s MFA program in Newark, cast spells over a crowd squeezed into the Harvard Bookstore. In town for the bookstore’s popular author series, Jones discussed her latest novel, “An American Marriage,” with Christina Sharpe, Professor of English at Tufts University and author of “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being” and “Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects.” Jones, effortlessly charming throughout the talk, began the event by recounting the surreal experience of having Oprah call her car phone to welcome “An American Marriage” into Winfrey’s 2018 Book Club. As the crowd’s laughter slowly melted away, Jones introduced her book, making sure to let her audience know that she would tiptoe around potential spoilers.

Set in the city of Atlanta, the novel narrates the story of Celestial, a woman separated for twelve long years from her wrongfully imprisoned husband, Roy. Written with lyrical grace, the story charts the aftermath of Roy’s incarceration, Celestial’s brave onward march, and the nuanced, complex experiences of Black America. For Jones, however, the novel is much more than an attempt at captivating fiction or an isolated commentary on race. Her book explores the intersection of race, society, and gender, and asks its readers to consider the disparity in expectations for married men and women. Jones’ novel sets out to note the importance of perseverance in the face of drawbacks, and to encourage such courageous perseverance regardless of gender or race.

The conversation shifted seamlessly between topics, lingering on moments of sparkling wit and touching emotion as Jones tackled Sharpe’s questions. Over the course of the discussion, Jones managed to engage a particularly interactive audience. She noted that this book first came into being at the Radcliffe Institute, where she was a fellow from 2011 to 2012, and inched onwards at a measured pace. Jones spoke of a time when, after spending one year on the last 50 pages of the novel, she had decided that there was nothing more she could do. Eventually, however, the author was able to craft an ending that she believed offered calculated responses to the questions of humanity, of liberty, of freedom that lurked between the lines of her moving book. Her book was an exercise in the strength of the individual—what a single person is capable of and what it means to pursue those capabilities.

She continued, defending Celestial’s refusal to put her life on hold and suffer because her husband was wrongfully incarcerated. Jones observed that empowerment shouldn’t always require the downfall of an oppressive patriarchal figure, but rather that a woman’s empowerment should also lie solely in her decision to move beyond tragedy. Through her novel, Jones asks a major question: Would it be fair to condemn Celestial’s eventual happiness just because her husband, a good man, was victim to the racial biases of America’s judicial system? She spoke with genuine passion, and this passion translated to greater clarity as she continued to challenge the notion that “the best thing a woman can do is serve her man.”

Standing in line to receive a signed copy of Jones’ book were two classmates from the author’s time at Spelman College: Gretchen Cook-Anderson, a Director at IES Abroad, and Shirley Greene, Associate Dean of Students at the Harvard Summer School. “I’ve known her for years, so to actually see this come to fruition is absolutely wonderful,” Greene said. Cooke-Anderson added, “She’s already an established writer, but this new book has reached a certain pinnacle and has really elevated the voice of women writers.”

“While I haven’t read this book, I came because I’d heard about Tayari Jones. I’m excited to read it and about her new approach to writing [about] marriage!” Camara Brown, a PhD student in the American Studies program, said.