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Novelist Tayari Jones: People often ask me, "Do you think the writer has an obligation to be political, to be subversive?"

And I say, "Writers and everyone else."

Marcia Franklin, Host: Coming up, I talk with author Tayari Jones about her best-selling novel, "An American Marriage," and about how one vicarious moment can change the course of a book.

That's "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference," next.

Stay tuned.

(MUSIC) Franklin: Hello and welcome to Dialogue.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

What happens when a new marriage is suddenly upended when one member of the couple goes to prison?

That's the subject of "An American Marriage," an award-winning novel by Tayari Jones.

The author of three other novels, including "Silver Sparrow" and "Leaving Atlanta," Jones was doing research for her next book, but was stymied.

Then one day, she overheard a conversation at a mall that would jumpstart her efforts.

Still, Jones would rewrite her book three times, and it was four years overdue.

But she finished it, and now has watched it take on its own life.

"An American Marriage" was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2018, and won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019.

It was chosen for Oprah's book club, and was singled out by former President Barack Obama for his year-end list of his favorite books.

I sat down with Jones at the 2021 Sun Valley Writers' Conference to talk about the novel, as well as what it's been like to try and write during a pandemic.

Franklin: I want to talk to you of course, about your works, but I also want to talk to you about what has occurred since, for instance, this book came out.

So much has happened in the last year and a half.

I mean, we can, from a literature perspective, Toni Morrison passed away, um, who I know you revere.

And so many of us do.

Um, obviously Covid, um, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter.

How has this last year and a half been for you as a person, and as a writer?

Jones: As a person, this has been a very sobering year.

I've recently moved from Brooklyn, New York back to my hometown of Atlanta.

Um, my parents are there.

It's my hometown, and my parents, my mother is I think 78, my dad's 84, and Covid put a target on them in a way.

It was very difficult to watch them so vulnerable.

I mean, I guess it's something that we all go through as our parents get older, but to see them, like my father, you know, very, you know, fearful of illness and then intersect that with all the racial unrest and his feeling of, he says, "I'm an old," he says, "I'm an old black man.

If I get it, they won't even try to save me."

And I was just, so -- it was just sobering, and a feeling that progress had been negated, but it also gave me the opportunity to care for them and to do for them what they did for me when I was a child and it's made us much closer.

But it's been extremely, I mean, the word is "stressful" and it's -- "stressful" isn't strong enough, but that has been very difficult.

And as a writer, I have had a hard time trying to write fiction.

For me, I write fiction, it's something I do, and it's a gift I give myself, time to indulge my imagination.

And it just felt incredibly selfish during these trying times to sit at a desk and indulge my imagination.

And so I wrote nonfiction and I'm not good at nonfiction.

It's not, it's not my jam; it's not my thing.

But I felt like I had to do that type of writing.

I felt like I had to do more of the, the work of writing, like the sacrifice of not doing the thing that brings me the most joy to do something that had a kind of expediency in the moment.

Franklin: It's interesting.

Um, you say that you don't feel nonfiction writing is, is your, forte, because there's a really interesting op-ed piece that you wrote during, you know, in recent memory, about people always saying that we need to "meet in the middle."

And I really was drawn to this piece.

And, and I thought it was very well-written.

Jones: Well, thank you.

Franklin: I had a lot of passion and actually rage in it.

And as I understood the piece, it was that we focus so much on, "Oh, we need to get along together and we need to come together," that we're negating or not looking at the very issues that are at stake.

And that there isn't really a, an in-between in some cases.

Jones: Well, we have this cultural myth that strongly held opinions are bad, and that the people who are not really one way or the other are somehow reasonable, sane, and they're, they're these calm, reasonable people in the middle.

That we are a nation, that we can, everyone can get along.

And that differences in ideology, we behave as though they are differences in opinion.

Opinion is a personal idiosyncrasy as opposed to the ways that power is distributed, the ways that oppression happens.

But there are consequences to these points of view.

And the middle moves depending on where the poles are.

We have to be able to take a moral stand and say, "This is right, or this is wrong.

There are some things about which is inappropriate to compromise."

Like we're looking at my home state in Georgia, all these draconian laws that are being enacted to stop people from voting.

The middle ground would be to stop some people from voting or stop fewer people from voting.

But that's immoral.

Everyone should have a right to the franchise.

And just because the middle – like I said, the middle ground would be, "Well, let's say, stop just some of the voter boxes from being taken away.

We'll just take away some of the precincts."

No, we're not – we should not take away any precincts.

Everyone should vote.

And I'm adamant about that.

And I think it would be immoral to be otherwise.

And I think about it because of my own parents' generation.

My parents were involved in civil rights and the sit-ins, my dad went to jail.

He was expelled from college and he gave everything he had.

Just imagine him, my dad – poor, poor kid from small town, Louisiana, got the opportunity to go to college and got expelled for justice only to be in his eighties and seeing what's happening now.

Franklin: Your parents' lives are really, really interesting.

Um, both involved in the civil rights movement.

Jones: That's how they met – at NAACP meetings.

It's, I think that may be why in my own fiction, I'm always drawn to the way that ordinary people's lives intersect with great historical moments.

Because when my parents tell the story about how they met -- and I fully believe that your parents' courtship story is your first exposure to propaganda.

It is definitely, that is a story told with a purpose.

But imagine; here they are at an NAACP meeting.

And when they tell it, they don't talk about NAACP very much.

They talk about the fact that my mother was wearing this cashmere twin set and pencil skirt.

And she disagreed with my father on some issue.

And she flounced out of the meeting in outrage.

And no one followed her.

So she went back into meeting and she re-flounced and then he followed her.

And then, you know, there's a love story about the true love and civil rights.

Franklin: It must influence your writing.

And in, in, um, in transitioning to talking about "An American Marriage," which is about, um, mass incarceration and, um, false imprisonment, that must emanate in part from the life that you've lived as a child, listening to your parents.

Jones: I think that it did in that I've always felt that a person should use whatever instruments, talents she has to make the world better.

What, who, your, people often ask me, "Do you think the writer has an obligation to be political, to be subversive?

And I say, "Writers and everyone else."

And writing happens to be what I have.

But at the same time, writing is my pleasure and joy in life.

And I, it's important to me that I write for fun as well.

Like, it has to be a balance.

Sometimes people treat work, particularly by black authors, as kind of a sociological experiment.

Like, "What are you trying to tell us about the evils of the world through this story?"

And the world's evils absolutely are in my stories.

They're in everyone's stories, I believe.

But also, it's important to me just to talk about, where does the heart fit in with these headlines, with what we know in history books?

How does it feel, and what do people want for their lives as individuals, as human beings, not just as symbols of a greater problem?

Franklin: Well, I love the origin story of this book, and you've talked about it before, but I, for those who haven't heard it it's worth repeating, because it's all about synchronicity and synchronicity is so important in our lives.

Um, but also in writing.

And you had a fellowship at Harvard; you were studying this very serious topic of mass incarceration, uh, thinking that you would write about it, and you got kind of stuck, you know, in terms of being overwhelmed with all of the information, but not necessarily having a through-line to, uh, writing a novel.

And so you went home to see your parents and something happened.

Jones: This is very true.

Yes.

I had done all this research, but I felt like I was trying to write the new "Jim Crow: The Musical," because I was trying to set statistics to music, because I'm not that kind of novelist.

All my other works have really been about families and life in Atlanta.

I had never really head-on grappled with something that I would call "an issue."

and I couldn't do it.

It's not, it's not my thing.

So I went to the mall and when I was there, I saw a couple.

They were in love and in trouble.

The woman was fabulously dressed -- bags, shoes, you know, everything.

And the man, he looks, he looked fine.

It was, nothing was wrong with him, but they were unevenly matched, I'll say.

And I heard her say clear as a bell, she said, "Roy, you know you wouldn't have waited on me for seven years."

I looked at him, I looked at her, they looked at me and we were all three in agreement that he would not have waited on her for seven years.

And he said to her, "I don't know what you're talking about.

This wouldn't have happened to you in the first place."

And he was right.

We all agreed.

And I thought, "Oh, this is how, this is where a novel is."

Because novels come from places of moral ambiguity.

And yes, he wouldn't have waited on her, but it's kind of not the point, but it kinda is the point.

And I went and decided, "Just concentrate on the marriage."

Two people married 18 months; he's sentenced to 12 years.

They've only been married 18 months.

So the question is, what should they do?

What will they do?

What is it reasonable to ask of another person?

And this is one of the ways that mass incarceration affects people's lives.

Every time someone goes to prison, it's a family separation.

Franklin: And we should say that it was false, a false imprisonment.

Jones: We should say it.

And I feel -- I'm kind of torn on that.

I mean, I understand it is important that he's falsely incarcerated.

But one thing I learned from reading oral histories of people who were wrongfully imprisoned, that is really not what they base their own stories on.

Because imagine this; if you've been in prison 20 years, you know a lot of people who were in prison because of the crimes they in fact committed.

But in your critique of the prison system, you're not going to say, "I'm the good one" and these other people with whom you've made relationships are correctly imprisoned.

And that was one of the things I was thinking about when Roy is in prison and he has this bond with his cellmate.

He doesn't want to leave him behind.

He worries about him being in prison.

So I was very wary of creating like this class of incarcerated, "the innocent incarcerated," and "the guilty incarcerated," because so much of what is wrong with the system of incarceration affects everyone there.

Franklin: Well, one thing that, um, that I liked about this story, or I appreciated, I guess, um, is that we don't know the background or racial background of the person who accused him.

Jones: We don't.

Franklin: That's, that's left open.

And, um, you can let your mind go where it goes on that.

And that was important, right, to leave that out?

Jones: Well, you know, most people don't realize that I've left it out.

They think they know, and they like, even, um, in the early jacket copy for "An American Marriage," you know, they write the little summary on the back.

And it said, "Roy, Roy Hamilton is an upwardly mobile black man, wrongfully accused of the rape of a white woman."

And it felt like it was being intoned from on high, "The Rape of a White Woman," you know, like that, it felt.

And I said, "I didn't say that."

And everyone in the publishing house said, "You didn't?"

And everybody… "I wrote the book; I'm telling you, I didn't say it."

But they're all looking through like, "Yes, you did.

Let me find it."

And it wasn't there.

Franklin: No, I didn't.

Yeah, and I didn't perceive it, that's interesting, yeah.

Um, I didn't perceive it necessarily as a, as a white woman, either.

I mean, um, the story really is, as you say, it's a, it's a, both a quiet story and a story full of rage in some ways, because it's a quiet story about a relationship and how that relationship is affected by an incarceration.

And it's told, um, in a way that I also really enjoy, through letters.

And we learn about this relationship through those letters.

That also, I assume -- and you type, right?

As I understand it, you actually… Jones: I type... Franklin: Another old fashioned thing... Jones: Yes, I am, I say, "Oh, I'm an analog.

I'm an analog girl in a digital world."

that would be me.

I love typewriters.

I love writing letters by hand.

I go to the post office.

I just enjoy these things that cause me to be more quiet and more mindful and intentional.

When I type on a computer, I type so quickly I don't quite know what I've typed; I have to read it over.

It is I, I liken it to the experience of, um, when you eat when you're really hungry and you eat really fast.

You look down; your plate is empty.

Clearly you ate it.

Who else could have eaten it?

It was you, but you don't quite know what you ate.

And that's how I feel about the writing on the computer.

I'm in like a fugue state and I'm not intentional.

I'm not aware of the workings of my own mind.

But the typewriter; if you try to type too fast, that typewriter will stop you because the keys get tangled.

You have to be de-lib-er-ate.

Franklin: But, uh, but the series of letters really allows you to, uh, do a number of things.

Why, why did you want as a mechanism, um, to have those letters in there?

Jones: Well, one, I've always wanted to write an epistolary novel, but it's really inappropriate to do it in a modern setting because no one writes letters except me and you.

So unless I'm going to write a novel about us, I can't really have the reader suspend her disbelief enough for me to write a novel entirely in letters.

And I know people have written novels that are in emails.

It's not the same.

Franklin: (Laughs) Jones: The, the way you write a letter is not the same as in an email.

But people in prison rely on letters for three reasons.

The person in prison, one, wants to know whatever information is contained; they want the update.

Two: the letter serves as a gesture.

I took this time to write this letter to you.

And when they received the letter, everyone else around them knows you have people out there who took time to write to you.

Thirdly, the letter itself, the physical paper, serves as a souvenir of the relationship; can be saved and carried around.

So that worked just for the believability of it.

But secondly, prison is two things: monotony and brutality.

And when you read a novel, you experience these things vicariously.

And no one wants to experience brutality, monotony.

Who wants to read a novel that really captures monotony?

You're not into that.

Who is?

So with the letters we only have about Roy's prison experience the things that he chooses to share with his wife.

So in him shielding her, he shields us, and we can cover five years in about a hundred pages.

Franklin: And, uh, and it moves back and forth.

I mean, it's not only -- there's a third individual and that person's thoughts are in there as well.

I don't want to give too much away.

Jones: You can go ahead and give that away.

I feel there's only one spoiler in this whole book and that's not what it is.

Franklin: I know what that is and I won't give that away either.

I promise.

Um, so there is, there are three people involved here and -- a love triangle, we can say.

Jones: Yes.

Franklin: And, um, many people as they understand it, even reading your book as you were writing it, when you were asking for advice, were not too happy with the female character, Celestial, whose husband is imprisoned, and who is having an affair with this third individual.

Jones: It is not an affair.

Franklin: It is a friendship, a deep friendship.

Jones: Yes, it is a relationship.

Franklin: A relationship.

And this has caused some consternation, hasn't it?

Jones: Well, and this is the part of the story where the fact that he is falsely imprisoned is so important.

Um, because when Roy is falsely imprisoned, he does become a symbolic person in the minds of everyone around him.

Like her father, who isn't even that into Roy, suddenly becomes his greatest defender because he says that, that Roy is a black man held hostage by the state.

And the idea is that her, that she should be chaste, you know, have sexual fidelity to him almost as a symbolic act, because she cannot use abstinence to get him released.

That's not how, that's not how the appeals process works.

But there's this sense that her chastity, that her, that she should not live her life almost as a monument to his suffering, even though there's not consequence to her doing this.

And she is a young woman, she's an artist, she's living her life.

And she's been married 18 months.

As she says, we were still counting the time off in months, like with a baby.

And he is in prison.

And he, that marriage is everything to him because it's all he has.

Where she has a lot of things.

So what prison has done is made their relationship hopelessly uneven.

They can't be together.

They can't share their lives.

And she finds love with the boy next door.

I chose Andre, the character, to be the boy next door, because I was looking for someone for whom readers could be open to her connecting with.

Because I felt like if she met someone new, people would say, "Who is this new person disrupting the sacred?"

He's the boy next door.

And if you are an American, you know that they put boys next door for one reason: so that you can marry them.

Franklin: (Laughs) Jones: That's why they're there.

I mean, it is a trope.

It is acc-, we have accepted as a culture that that's okay.

Except in this situation.

Franklin: Yeah.

Jones: Because ever since the odyssey, we have this idea of women's sexual fidelity as a monument, as a gesture of support toward men's struggles.

But is it more reasonable -- is it more selfish for her not to wait or is it selfish for him to want her to wait?

And that's why i think they, both of them have to grow up and stop thinking of themselves and their relationships symbolically and to understand each other as vulnerable human beings, Franklin: The title -- "An American Marriage."

um, it is.

It's an American marriage.

Jones: Yes.

Franklin: But that was not necessarily a title that came...it was a title that came easily in the sense that I, as I understand it, during some banter, it just came out.

But it wasn't necessarily a title that, that you could sit, you had to sit with it for a while for it to be okay.

Jones: Yeah.

I was brainstorming with my editor and I said, "Oh, we should call this book "An American Marriage."

I was being cute.

I said, because when you say things are "American," people think they're important, you know, ha ha.

And he really glommed onto it.

And I was not, I did not, I was not convinced.

I felt like the title, "An American Marriage" didn't seem to have anything to do with me.

Because I've never been called "American" without another word in front of it.

I've only been called "Black American."

I've been called "African-American," but I've never been called "American" in that way.

And I felt like, were they trying to disguise the book?

Did they not want people to know what it was really about?

And just went through so much and I spoke to my editor and I told-- not my editor, I'm so sorry, I spoke to my mentor.

Franklin: Pearl.

Jones: Yes.

Pearl.

Pearl Cleag.

She's been, I've been up under her wings since I was about 16 years old.

And she said, um, "I get it.

I get how you feel.

That word "American" is heavy.

It's got a lot of baggage."

But, she pointed out something quite obvious, which I had considered, which was sad.

What happens to Celestial and Roy could only happen in America because we incarcerate more of our citizens than anyone else.

I'm like, "I get that."

But still, it just felt weird.

And she said, "So many people made so many sacrifices for you to have the right to your citizenship.

That is what civil rights is about.

You having a right to your citizenship."

So if you, she said, "If you want to call it something else because you don't like "An American Marriage" -- let's say you don't like the font.

You just don't like the ring of it.

That's fine," she said.

"But do not reject this title because you don't feel that you have a right to it."

And I did re-, I did come to say think, "Yeah, I didn't think I had a right to that word.

And I thought a lot about what she said.

And then I went to the editor and I said, "Oh, how about we call it "Portrait of an American Marriage," "Story of American Marriage?"

And he said, "Why are you trying to make yourself smaller?

Which I think is a gender thing to say, "Oh no, I'm not having any big ideas here.

I'm just writing a little story."

He said, "Please think more of yourself and think more of this work."

And I realized, again, I mean, it was a reckoning for me to accept this title.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but I knew that I had to try.

And so I said, "Okay, we're going to call this "An American Marriage."

And he said, "Whew, thank goodness, because we have already printed the jacket."

They had that jacket for weeks and weeks and weeks.

They were just waiting for me to go through my feelings.

Franklin: Now, um, talk about thinking big.

So it's a New York Times bestseller.

It's got some stickers on here and one of them is Oprah's book club.

And, uh, so, and, uh, President Obama, I believe, had it on his summer reading list at one point.

This has just been, um, well, describe what that's been like.

Um, because you do have a funny story, I believe, about Oprah when she called you to tell you about that you were being picked.

Jones: Yes.

Oprah calls the book club winners herself out of the blue.

I think that's of the many pleasures of being Oprah is calling people and shocking them.

So the phone rang; it was a blocked call.

I answered it, and the person on the other end said, "Hey girl, it's Oprah."

I was driving.

I had to pull over.

I had to put on my hazard lights and pull over.

And I was talking to her.

I was in Vegas.

I was working in Vegas at the time.

And, um, like panhandlers were tapping on the window and I'm shooing them away letting Oprah talk.

It was exciting and you know, this is my fourth novel.

This is my fourth novel.

And for my first three novels, I mean, I didn't even get reviewed by the Times.

And I, I, used to just kind of eat my heart out over that.

I felt like, "Oh, I'll never catch up.

I'll never, I'll never be "that" person.

I'll never have my moment."

But I also at the same time learned to be content with what I did have.

And I'm grateful that this happened this late in my career, 20 years into my writing, because I think I have a sense of perspective about it all.

And I'm enjoying it in a way that I don't think I would -- if it had happened earlier, I may be, I may have felt entitled to it, may think, "oh, this is just the way it is.

I write a book, everyone gets excited."

But this time, like everything has been a thrill and it has made me very grateful.

Like at first I was freaked out because Oprah's good name, literal name, is on here.

Her name is right here on this book.

And I thought, "Oh, there's so much pressure."

Then I thought about all the other people who've lent their name to me, like Mrs. Cathcart, my 12th grade English teacher wrote me a letter to go to college.

Her name was her good name as well.

Her name meant as much to her as Oprah's name means to her.

And when Mrs. Cathcart wrote for me, I didn't feel intimidated.

I felt, I felt supported.

And so I learned to look at these endorsements, to feel supported by them instead of rattled by them.

Franklin: Does it give you, um, oomph for your next work or does it make it scary, or both?

Jones: You know, I believe every book is hard in its own way.

I think the fear I have about my next book, isn't so much, um, a fear of not being successful.

Every book is harder than the last, because with every book you've used up your obvious subject matter.

Your first couple of books, it's the low-hanging fruit.

You just get that, you get that coming-of-age story.

You know, you remember what happened to you in the eighth grade; that's your first book right there, right there.

But as you go on, the fruit is higher up.

You're either writing about things you don't know about personally, or you're writing about things that you don't want, didn't want to talk about for some reason.

And I think the challenge of this book I'm working on now really is just a challenge of trying to grow.

Franklin: Are you able to talk about it?

Jones: I can't.

(Mutual laughter.)

Jones: I can't.

I'm too freaked out.

And also when you talk about a book, you talk some of the, some of the vroom out of it.

Franklin: I get it.

I get it, too.

When you're working on a documentary, you're kind of keeping it, you know, seeing what's there.

And, but you, you know, are you listening to some conversations on the sly?

Jones: I tried that.

Franklin: You, know, like you eavesdropped and you got that great idea.

And now you... Jones: Either the people around me are not as interesting as they used to be.

Or maybe that lightning can't strike twice.

Franklin: You need to go to the mall again.

Jones: You know, I did go to the mall.

That's the only reason I go to the mall is for my art.

(Mutual laughter.)

Jones: I'm not shopping.

No.

Franklin: This book's been optioned, hasn't it?

Jones: Yes.

Yes.

I'm, um, I am, right now, I'm working on a screenplay, which I've never done.

A screenplay is so much different than a novel.

Because a novel asks, "How does it feel?

How does love feel?

How does incarceration feel?

How does jealousy feel?"

A screenplay asks, "What does love do?

What does love say?

What does incarceration say?"

It's a really different question.

Like the way you really judge novelists in many ways is how they can capture the emotion of a moment.

But an actor will do that with her face or her gesture.

So I gotta think of things for the people to do, to say.

And it's great to learn to do something new.

How often as an adult do you get to pick up a brand new skill?

So I'm trying to just remember what a blessing it is to learn something new and not, you know, climb the walls.

Franklin: Well, I really look forward to reading your next work and, uh, to seeing the film version of "An American Marriage."

and thanks for taking the time to stop by and talk with me.

Jones: Thank you for having me.

Franklin: I hope you've enjoyed this interview with Tayari Jones, the author of "An American Marriage ."

Our conversation was taped at the 2021 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.

My thanks to the organizers of that engaging event, to our guests, and to our dialogue team.

If you'd like to watch this interview again, or any of the nearly 70 conversations I've taped over the years at the Sun Valley Writers' Conference, check out our website.

Just go to idahoptv.org and click on "Dialogue."

For Dialogue, I'm Marcia Franklin.

Thanks for tuning in.

(MUSIC) Presentation of Dialogue on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great State of Idaho, by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

With additional funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation.