{"id":2445296,"date":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=307885"},"modified":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T22:00:00","slug":"novelist-tayari-jones-on-her-aspen-words-literary-prize-winning-an-american-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/novelist-tayari-jones-on-her-aspen-words-literary-prize-winning-an-american-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Novelist Tayari Jones on her Aspen Words Literary Prize-winning \u2018An American Marriage\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Aspen Words Literary Prize winner Tayar Jones will speak at Aspen Summer Words on Tuesday, June 18.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Tayari Jones knew that she wanted to write a novel about American mass incarceration. She spent years researching, writing and abandoning drafts.<\/p>\n

But it was a chance encounter at a shopping mall that finally crystallized what would become \u201cAn American Marriage,\u201d her essential and masterful portrait of an African-American couple split apart by a wrongful imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Searching for a way to illuminate the corrosive societal effect of the U.S. carceral system, Jones studied the issue as a fellow at Harvard University\u2019s Radcliffe Institute beginning in 2011. But the author struggled to find her story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first time I set out to write a novel that was deliberately engaging with a social issue,\u201d Jones recalled from Seattle in a recent phone interview. \u201cI had the hardest time. Everything I was writing just wasn\u2019t good and sparkling and complicated in the way a novel should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found she was trying to animate social issues, rather than telling a human story. But then she witnessed a couple arguing at an Atlanta mall and the book came to her in a flash.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard the woman say, \u2018Roy, you know you wouldn\u2019t have waited on me for seven years.\u2019 He said, \u2018I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about. This wouldn\u2019t have happened to you in the first place,\u2019\u201d Jones recalled. \u201cAnd then I knew what I needed to make a novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

She knew then that she\u2019d write the story of a marriage. The novel\u2019s Roy is a successful businessman, his wife Celestial a talented artist. They\u2019re a well-off, young and newlywed Atlanta couple with roots in Georgia and Louisiana. They\u2019re torn apart pointlessly and devastatingly when Roy is arrested during a visit to family in Louisiana and sentenced to 12 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.<\/p>\n

Jones tells their story through alternating first-person narratives from Roy, Celestial and Celestial\u2019s lifelong friend Andre \u2013 along with letters to and from Roy in prison \u2013 as the relationship erodes.<\/p>\n

With its multiple voices and perspectives, \u201cAn American Marriage\u201d draws the reader\u2019s loyalty to swing to at least three often-opposing sides, as they learn more about each character\u2019s viewpoint. This miracle of a book is also peppered with romance, humor and pop culture references.<\/p>\n

Jones doesn\u2019t grant any of her characters sainthood. They all have secrets, they\u2019ve all make mistakes. And she lets readers see the world through each of their eyes, navigating thorny issues of race, class, gender, parenting, abortion, love and loyalty. By the time you\u2019re turning the last page, your empathetic capacity has been enlarged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey call it \u2018mass incarceration\u2019 because it happens to so many people and I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve thought about what that means for our society and impacted communities,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

The familiar injustices of racism in the judicial system are so familiar that Jones doesn\u2019t bother much with courtroom scenes and legal proceedings. She deals with Roy\u2019s arrest, trial and wrongful conviction elliptically. When you realize what she\u2019s doing, it\u2019s a shock to find that these wrongs are so common that you can fill in the blanks. Instead, her narrative centers on the stories the public rarely hears about the intimate lives of the families decimated by mass incarceration.<\/p>\n

In April, Jones won the second annual Aspen Words Literary Prize, an award from the locally based literary organization given to a work of fiction that addresses contemporary social issues. She will give a public talk on her work Tuesday at Belly Up, as part of the Aspen Summer Words conference and literary festival.<\/p>\n

The Pitkin County Library and Aspen Words in early May launched a community read of \u201cAn American Marriage,\u201d giving free copies to locals interested in reading and discussing the book this summer. The scene at the library on book giveaway day was every author\u2019s dream: copies of \u201cAm American Marriage\u201d stacked high, hundreds of readers filing in excitedly to get their copy and start reading. (The library hosted a community discussion about the novel on Thursday, in advance of Jones\u2019 visit.)<\/p>\n

The local conversation about the book follows such events across the country and discussion online that came in the wake of its Oprah\u2019s Book Club selection last year. Along with the Aspen prize, the bestselling book has also earned Jones the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and earlier this month was awarded the Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction.<\/p>\n

Jones wrote the book to get people talking about the true cost of mass incarceration, but she\u2019s not prescriptive about the debates it inspires.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was most interested in the trickle-down, collateral effects on families, on the ways we understand gendered relationships,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you can never predict where the conversation is going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her travels with \u201cAn American Marriage,\u201d she\u2019s met many people who see themselves in its pages. Among the most impactful Jones said, was a man in Fairfax, Virginia whose father was imprisoned and who had a fraught relationship with his mother as a result. He told jones that her book allowed him to understand his mother\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public face of these families is stoic and they are loyal and dedicated and single-minded in their concern for their loved one,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in a novel you can see behind closed doors. You can see the true cost of sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summer Words runs Sunday through Thursday and includes panels with writers including essayist Meghan Daum, poet Tina Chang, novelists Tom Barbash and Nick Flynn and Aspen Words Lit Prize finalist Samrat Upadhyay, who are all teaching workshops.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aspen Words Literary Prize winner Tayar Jones will speak at Aspen Summer Words on Tuesday, June 18.Courtesy photo Tayari Jones knew that she wanted to write a novel about American mass incarceration. She spent years researching, writing and abandoning drafts. But it was a chance encounter at a shopping mall that finally crystallized what would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 16:20:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}