An American Marriage

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Almost all of us are claimed as subjects of a nation as soon as we are born. Whether or not we’d like to be, whether or not we’ll come to claim that nation back, whether the nation claims us proudly or grudgingly, we are marked down as entered into a very particular contract promptly upon our arrival on Earth. As with any relationship assumed to carry specific qualities and meanings, the relationship of citizen to nation is in fact nothing if not difficult to define: complex, diverse, and powerful. Other relationships that exhibit these qualities are those of family members and partners in a marriage which, in addition to the citizen-nation relationship, form the triad at the heart of Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage.

Or perhaps it would be more realistic to say one of the triads at the heart of An American Marriage. Traveling home to Louisiana to visit his mother and father not long after marrying his adored and idealized wife Celestial, the charming and ambitious Roy Othaniel Hamilton is arrested and—in short order—convicted of a rape he did not commit. He is sent to prison, and the rest of the characters are not. Although he is eventually released early as a result of the devoted legal work performed by Celestial’s uncle, Roy is still imprisoned for five years, a stretch of time within which everything changes both inside his family and his marriage. Upon his release, Roy finds himself struggling to make sense of a world which—with the exception of his father—seems to have abandoned him. And Roy’s is not the only story told here. Through letters as well as first-person narration, both Celestial and Andre, Celestial’s oldest friend and Roy’s college buddy, add their voices and visions of reality to the mix. Roy, Celestial, and Andre form the novel’s second triad—their association nearly as loaded and uneasy as that between nation, marriage, and family.

The plot which ensnares Celestial, Roy, and Andre is enthralling and dramatic, enriched by a nice balance between action and interiority. Jones is as skillful at crafting dramatic moments of interpersonal plot as she is at showing the flawed, solipsistic wanderings of human minds mulling over the past, present, and future. However, there were some aspects of the novel which felt less dimensional.

There were moments where Celestial’s lack of agency felt disappointing. As a passionate artist and protean, mysterious woman centered by the novel both as an object of desire and agent of her own destiny, there are numerous moments where Celestial nonetheless willingly surrenders responsibility—for what’s happening, what she wants to happen, and even her own choices and communication. There were moments when Roy’s sense of being entitled—namely, to sex with and complete investment from, a woman—overwhelmed his otherwise compelling and sympathetic development as a character.

Even taking these significant limitations in mind, I see these characteristics as symptomatic rather than endemic. How would Roy behave, really, had he not been promised again and again by culture and society that he deserved everything (as a man) and nothing—and, indeed, punishment (as a black man)? How would Celestial behave, really, had she not been raised in cultures that simultaneously told her she was wildly desirable, and yet only as something that could be “possessed”; that she was independent, powerful, and expected-to-be-strong, and yet nonetheless obliged to prioritize the men of her “Race” above her own emotions; that she was beloved, and yet somehow owed people for their love of her. Roy, Celestial, and Andre, too, are all products of and participants in a torturous American marriage, a marriage which, like any other, promises great romance, but can’t escape being founded on a tradition of economics, enforcing of social norms, and reproducing itself. As with any marriage, when it fails one, should one really be surprised? Should one really be surprised at how bad it hurts?

An American Marriage tells one story of these questions, and perhaps even answers them. For while the novel offers a meaningful commentary on black US American culture broadly, the US prison industrial complex, as well as marriage and relationships between cis men and cis women, the heart of the book was its individual human characters, showing again and again that even in the face of sometimes terrifyingly powerful systems and traditions, each of us still has the ability to hurt one another, remain in solidarity with one another, and even heal one another.

Essential points:

An American Marriage is an engrossing novel which takes on hard-hitting issues around race, marriage, family, and what it means to be part of a nation while simultaneously spinning a gripping plot full of rich characters. Subjects this novel includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others may be thrilled to find sensitively discussed in their literature!): Death, incarceration, abortion/loss of a child, abusive relationships.