Imperfect union
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work,” Toni Morrison wrote in 2004, after the re-election of George W. Bush. “Not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!” Morrison’s quote found new life in November 2016, when an even more unimaginable electoral outcome filled half of the populace with even greater distress.
Writers who accept the job of engaging with the burning issues of their time undertake a dual mission. The activist commitment requires a choice of topics, settings, characters and plots that highlight the injustices that set their flying fingers on fire. And the artistic commitment, the delivery system for the message, requires writing that’s powerful, and beautiful enough to overcome readers’ resistance.
Succeeding at one of these undertakings is challenging. Succeeding at both is about as rare as a first-edition Gutenberg Bible. In her fourth novel, Tayari Jones (“Silver Sparrow,” “The Untelling,” “Leaving Atlanta”) does exactly that. “An American Marriage” is that rare treasure, a novel that pulls you under like a fever dream, a novel whose pages you start to ration midway through, a novel you miss like a lover the minute you kiss its final page goodbye.
Jones’ protagonists, newlyweds Celestial and Roy, are living the “New South” dream in contemporary Atlanta. Celestial is a successful entrepreneur from a wealthy Southern family, Roy an ambitious executive from poor Southern stock. Their marriage is passionate and solid, their future so seemingly secure that they’ve just started trying for a child. And then, hours after their first attempt, their door is rammed open, Roy taken away in handcuffs. Race trumps class, racial profiling trumps truth, and Roy is railroaded into a 12-year prison term for raping a white woman, a crime he didn’t commit.
In a story line narrated by alternating voices at different points on a moving timeline, Roy’s life in prison unspools alongside Celestial’s flagging efforts to be true to her husband and to herself. Incarcerated husband and abandoned wife are frozen in separate snow globes, ruminating on the same relationship from different points of view. While Roy writes daily letters to his wife, campaigning to keep her, he rightly senses that Celestial is drawing back, considering her options.
“Marriage is like grafting a limb onto a tree trunk,” Celestial reflects. “You have the limb, freshly sliced, dripping sap, and smelling of springtime, and then you have the mother tree stripped of her protective bark, gouged and ready to receive this new addition . ... In my marriage, I never determined which of us was rootstock and which the grafted branch.”
“Until they slapped a twelve-year sentence on me,” Roy mulls from the confines of his cell, “I had hit everything I aimed for: a job that more than paid the bills, a four-bedroom house with a big lawn I cut myself on Sundays, and a wife who lifted me up like a prayer . ... Next on the agenda was children. It takes being together to another level when you go to bed for a purpose larger than your own feelings. Even after what happened next, I’ll never forget that night and all our sweaty intentions.”
“My novel is not about criminal justice, per se,” Jones has written. “It is issue adjacent, rather than a protest novel.” This grateful reader begs to differ. Yes, as its title indicates, “An American Marriage” is fundamentally the story of a marriage. But it is also a searing, disturbing critique of America — the generational, geographic and gender gaps that rend even the most loving couples and families; the separate and unequal treatment of African Americans in the penal system; the lingering lash of slavery that still stings today. “An American Marriage” is a gripping, masterfully crafted message in a bottle, at once a dispatch from the past and a foreshadowing of the future, bringing exquisite reading pleasure and painful, crucial news.