Some years ago Tayari Jones witnessed a public argument between a seemingly mismatched couple…and stole it, down to name and outfit, for her novel. Seems like that ought to be a cautionary tale for people who insist on bringing their private business into public spaces. But for Jones it meant huge things…eventually. The novel took a while to form and multiple rewrites from different perspectives, eventually ending featuring all three angles on the love triangle. Fairly average by all means love triangle of a marital drama…but with a timely twist.
And it is that precisely that sociopolitically perfectly timed twist that got the novel all of its ‘acclaim, including love from Barack and very aggressive pimping from Oprah. It’s a book that dared to take on the greatly unjust American judicial system…or more precisely bravely depicted the affect it has on black community. Because, of course, the system is greatly skewed, biased and racist. And Jones has cleverly enough made her protagonist Roy (that stolen name) a productive member of society, an educated, ambitious, American dream powered self made upstart going places as opposed to a small time criminal nobody turned martyr, so when he gets wrongly accused and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit it shows that color bias of the system to the greatest effect. And that’s the spine of the story…Roy goes to jail for years. The spine and the message both. And for that alone, it’s perfectly good. But this isn’t titled Roy’s story. This is American Marriage. So a marriage story. A love story too…although not quite the fairy tale kind. Roy and Celestial. Yes, kinda makes you wish the author would have listened to more of that conversation and stole another name, because WTF kind of name is Celestial, it isn’t even in a proper form, it’s a freaking adjective. Named after her mom, Celeste, this is a perfectly good name fubared. But anyway, Celestial is starry, sure enough. A daughter of a wealthy family, well educated…doll maker. That’s her livelihood, fancy custom made dolls. Creepy, but there it is. Roy’s had it tougher, but still backed by a loving working class family, he has taken advantage of every assistance program and scholarship available to get an education and begin a career in finance. The two are a sort of perfect young couple, good looking, ambitious, etc. And black in a racist country. And soon they find out that no matter what cushions they have created for themselves, there’s no getting away from the innate American racism. They are only 18 months into their marriage when Roy gets accused of rape and put away. They end up spending longer separately than they did together and their marriage strains at the seams. You can witness this through an epistolary exchange, the drifting from each other, the drifting from themselves. Everyone changes, in and out of relationships. But once in…the idea is to change together and at least harmoniously and organically. Roy and Celestial don’t get to do that and, given a second chance, don’t know if they can return to where they once were or if they should. So obviously a serious heavy drama. Obviously well timed. Obviously important. But is it good…that’s a different question. From a perspective of pure literary criticism…it’s far from perfect. Roy’s trial is nonexistent (presumably to highlight the brutal blow of injustice), but how does a man whose wife gives him a perfect alibi, a man who has left no DNA (because he didn’t commit the crime), a man with good legal representation gets committed just like that? Seems an overreach even for the US justice system. And on that note, why doesn’t he sue upon getting out? The man is more than entitled to conpensation. All this time he’s had the services of Celestial’s family uncle/lawyer for free, you’d think he’d take more advantage of it. And isn’t the ending just way too neatly lined up, bow and all, considering how heavy the book is. It’s like a Lifetime movie happy ending pinned onto to a heavy prime network drama. But those are really small potatoes, comparing to the meat of it all, which for me was the gender roles. I’m not even a very aggressive feminist, but in this book it was appalling enough to stand up and shout. First off, let it be known, I didn’t like Roy. Not before, during or after prison. I didn’t think he was a likeable protagonist and no matter how much the author split the narrative, this really is his story and it’s difficult to care about him, though you’re obviously suppose to. Roy was an arrogant ass to begin with and then just added prison muscles and thug jive on top of that. The marriage he’s so desperately clinging to wasn’t perfect to begin with, he was already playing around, just a year some in. And yet…the expectation he and the rest of the world, including Celestial’s own father have of Celestial are insane. She is to stand by her man. No ifs, whens or buts. Because her man was done wrong by the state, she is to provide comfort and loving attention to him whenever requested, no matter what she might want or need. It’s a medieval and repulsive attitude you don’t really expect to encounter in a modern day first world country. Maybe it’s a race thing, can’t speak to that, don’t know enough and PC police wouldn’t allow it anyway. But it was really offputting. The novel basically made it seem as though black women are expected to just be a sort of warm loving mattress/buttress for their men. They can have their own lives, ambitions, etc, but must be willing to adjust it or give it up to accommodate their men. Always. No surprise Barack loved this book so much. I mean, you don’t see his wife with her two ivy league school degrees practicing law anywhere, do you. She’s gotten very far in life on her own, then met her man and recreated her life to accommodate him. It obviously works, they seem very happy together, but isn’t there something somewhat hypocritical about the fact that a woman who’s made her recent career going around the country inspiring young black girls to Become whatever they aspire to be…gave up her own career and rendered her superb education useless almost as soon as she became a wife and a mother. Forgive the digression…but it was in line with saying that basically this book is as good at shining the light on institutionalized racism and injustice and it is at taking a dump on female empowerment. Sorry, Celestial, you got more than a dumb name to deal with here. Apparently the female ideal is an overweight Walmart worker who grabs a man off the street based on nothing more than a high school memory, takes him to her place, feeds him and has unprotected sex with him despite the fact that he is straight out of prison. One just can’t complete with that. And it’s still possibly more than Roy deserves. But there it is. Obviously, this is a subjective opinion of the book. Most reviews are. And there are a great many reviews of this book. I believe it’s a sort of thing that’ll work differently for different readers. I don’t regret reading it, though didn’t love it as much as most. It is perfectly Oprah tailored vehicle. You can just picture her throwing books at people and booming…You get American Marriage, You get American Marriage, You all get American Marriage. Surprised no one’s made a miniseries of it yet. So yeah, those are my thoughts, lots of thoughts, Might be my longest review yet, If you made it to the end…thank you.
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