And he just wants to find a clean home and a faithful wife waiting on him in the other end.īATES: Jones says originally she was writing Celestial's story, but as she wrote, it didn't feel right. He has this huge challenge, and he has to travel this journey and face all these obstacles. JONES: This book, in many ways, was inspired by 'The Odyssey.' I feel like Roy is like Odysseus. Tayari Jones says how Roy struggles against his fate is, for her, a new telling of an old story. And they're still newlyweds when Roy is unjustly accused of a terrible crime. They meet at their historically black college and marry after graduation. It's the story of a young African-American couple, Roy and Celestial Hamilton. This wouldn't have happened to you in the first place.īATES: And right then and there, the seed for 'An American Marriage' took root. And he said, I don't know what you're talking about. And she said to him, Roy, you know you wouldn't have waited on me for seven years. JONES: The woman was beautifully dressed, and the young man, he looked fine. TAYARI JONES: And when I was there in the mall, I overheard a couple arguing.īATES: Something about them caught her attention. Then she went home to visit her mother in Atlanta and took a trip to the mall just to walk around and clear her head. Months later, she knew a lot about the criminal justice system and how it affected black men's lives, but none of that information moved her to write anything. She'd gotten a fellowship to study race and incarceration in preparation for her next book. KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Tayari Jones was on her way to Harvard. She told Karen Grigsby Bates of NPR's Code Switch team how she came to write 'An American Marriage.' The writer's name is Tayari Jones, and her much-noticed novel began with a meeting in a mall. Next, we meet a novelist who says she owes her newest book to a chance encounter. He made his name painting people he met almost at random on the street. The artist who unveiled President Obama's portrait this week said his art depends in part on chance.

An american marriage review