Rating: 5 stars
Dear History
This Is How I Love You
Before An American Marriage, these were the original titles Tayari Jones suggested to her editor. She wanted a title that encapsulated the essence of what she was trying to tell: a love story. Not a novelized version of the new Jim Crow.
To Tayari, An American Marriage sounded like it was about some white people in Connecticut getting a divorce. Then her editor asked:
Why do you think Connnecticut is more American than Atlanta?
Boom! An American Marriage was born.
Right away we find Roy and Celestial in the middle of an argument. Well, actually they’re in the middle of their wedding anniversary but you can’t have one without the other apparently. Still, they are newlyweds at the height of their love. Celeste is an artist. She’s elegant and poised. Roy is a well-to-do executive. He is smooth-talking and sincere.
But before they can fully settle into the routine of their marriage Roy is quite literally ripped out of bed for a crime he didn’t commit and sentenced to twelve years in prison.
It all happens so fast that we as readers practically feel the whiplash.
Now, I would just like to interrupt this review to state for the record that I, Matthew Cody Raschella, am not a sucker for romance. I can appreciate it, but I don’t swoon. I’m not a swooner. And while I may not have swooned here, per se, I was invested. So invested that my heart broke when Roy was met with this injustice.
If we rewind twenty or so pages, before Roy is wrongly convicted for this crime, we come across a line he says to the reader that intensifies the painful irony to come.
“…if you’re going to be black and struggling, the United States is probably the best place to do it.”
Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
Mass incarceration.
This is what Tayari Jones wants to talk about. She wants to tell it in the form of a love story because what better way to get us thinking differently – to really make us feel – than to reel us in with an honest to God love story?
Then, just like our justice system, she yanks the rug out from under us and turns the mirror back around. She takes us inside a truth we’re already aware of but may not feel personally connected to:
That our justice system locks up innocent men and women simply because they are Black. Black and proud.
America is like a face full of makeup covering pox scars and dark circles. The pox scars are our racist acts and the dark circles are the toll it takes on everyone involved, victim and perpetrator.
Tayari takes us inside the crime through Roy and Celestial’s marriage and man oh man does it make you feel.
Roy’s fate alters every aspect of his life – his career, his family, his dignity – but what we see, what we get to mourn, is his marriage.
It’s heartbreaking.
And it makes you mad.
And just when you think you can’t get more invested Tayari shifts the storytelling to a series of love letters between Roy and Celestial while he’s behind bars.
We weave in and out of the passing years gaining bits and pieces of information from both points of view.
(Fun fact: Tayari writes letters all the time to family and friends. I mention this why?)
Because she’s so good at it! These are honestly some of the most believable love letters I’ve ever read!
I dare you to only read one.
Warning: I’m about to share information that is on the dust jacket so if you’re somebody that doesn’t read dust jackets, skip this paragraph.
Roy is released early. I won’t say how or why or what comes of it, but I was as close to biting my fingernails as I’ve ever been.
His early release, mixed with other pieces of drama, created an ending that was, to me, spot on. I would’ve held the book in a much different light if what happened, in the end, didn’t happen. Tayari Jones says she spent over a year working on those last fifty pages, and boy, oh boy, she did not disappoint.
An American Marriage is eye-opening, heartfelt, beautifully written, and tinged with sadness, but the kind of sadness that’s layered with a hint of hope. I would definitely read it again. Whether you’re a lover of romance or just appreciate good old fashion storytelling, I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy.
Oh yeah, did I mention there’s a love triangle?
That’s all. Happy reading!
An American Marriage can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, or anywhere books are sold.
