An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
“In the private library of my spirit, there is a dictionary of words that aren’t. On those pages is a mysterious character that conveys what it is to have no volition even when you do. On the same page, it is explained how once or twice in your life you will find yourself bared, underneath the weight of a man, but a most ordinary word will save you.”
An American Marriage (2018) is American writer Tayari Jones’s fourth novel and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019. Jones’s previous novels have focused on the city of Atlanta and narratives around class and racial divides. An American Marriage is no exception, but in this tale of homecoming, marriage, obligation and love, Jones draws a more nuanced picture of racial differences. Her latest novel explores how two people from two different upbringings come together in a world that already has a story mapped out for them.
Roy Othaniel Hamilton Jr and Celestial Davenport are newlyweds. A year into their marriage, they visit Roy’s parents in small-town Eloe, Louisiana. The opening chapters provide us with glimpses into the relationship between the two. It seems things are already precarious:
“I know that there are those out there who would say that our marriage was in trouble. People have a lot of things to say when they don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.”
Roy, raised by his mother Olive and step-father Big Roy, had an upbringing focused on making ends meet, his parents intent on keeping him out of jail and out of pre-marital relations with young women. On the other hand, Celestial had an enterprising scientist father, who was able to provide a more comfortable life for his family. Celestial, wanting to pursue a more independent life herself, is reluctant to commit to what Roy, and both sets of parents, are pressuring them for: a baby.
After a contentious first evening with Roy’s parents, Roy and Celestial head to a local motel for the night, and this is the moment “a meteor crashed into our life,” as Roy tells it. After an argument, Roy heads out to fetch some ice, meeting an older woman in the hall with her arm in a sling. Roy assists the woman with her own ice, helping her to her room and fixing the toilet, warning her to double-check her door is locked when he leaves. While he returns to Celestial, and they reconcile there is a chilling sense of forewarning as Roy narrates to the reader:
“This was the last happy evening I would experience for a very long time.”
That same night, their motel room door is kicked in. Roy and Celestial are ripped from their beds by the police, and thrown, handcuffed, on the asphalt in the motel parking lot, lying in “parallel like burial plots” - a forbidding image of their marriage to come. The woman Roy met earlier has been assaulted in the night and identified Roy as the perpetrator. Without evidence, Roy is shipped off to jail, awaiting trial, where he is promptly found guilty and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment.
This all happens in the first 40 pages of the book. Jones doesn’t elaborate on Roy’s trial, the process or the injustice of the situation. As the reader, we are simply left to know that this is a part of life for a black man who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After the initial chapters, the story is told in letters between Roy and Celestial. The letters go from odes of love, to distance, to heartbreak - neither knowing how to ‘be married’ in the circumstances life has thrust them into. Whatever the state of their marriage before, Roy’s imprisonment becomes the explosion they must orbit around in the years that follow. The outcome is perhaps inevitable, as Roy and Celestial eventually stop speaking:
“This is what you want for me? This is what you want for my life? Is this the way you love me?”
After five years in prison, justice is found and Roy is a free man. On leaving prison, it has been two years since he and Celestial last spoke. In alternating chapters, we hear from each of their perspectives, with neither certain what freedom will mean for Roy or their relationship. Thrown into the mix is Andre, childhood friend of Celestial and college friend of Roy - the catalyst for the two’s relationship initially. As Roy races home to reconcile with Celestial once more, the three of them will collide in unexpected ways.
Jones has described An American Marriage as a novel in conversation with The Odyssey. A story of a man trying to get back home, a wife unsure of how much she is permitted to rebuild her own life. Jones toys with the question of what the institution of marriage really means, when and how love factors in, and what obligation means in the face of the harshest injustices of our world:
“A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Every one of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”
Overall, I found this to be a rich and revealing portrayal of relationships. There was a slight imbalance in the narrative, with a lot of the novel dedicated to Roy’s time in prison and how the couple drifts apart. The heart of the story felt like it rested more in what happened when the two came back together, with the revelation and decisions made at this point feeling like they weren’t given the depth I would have liked as the reader.
Ultimately, An American Marriage is a moving, meditative novel on what brings two people together in love, desire and marriage, what binds them and what pulls them apart. It’s an intense tale of individuality, standing up for yourself, and fighting for what (you hope) are the right and meaningful things in life.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under www.wordswithelaine.com.
