Tayari Jones was born in Atlanta, GA in 1970. She lived there for most of her life. With the exception of the year she lived in Nigeria, she lived there until she finished Spelman College in 1991. After Spelman, she went to the University of Iowa to pursue a Ph.D. in English.
In 1996 she decided to go back to graduate school: this time, to study creative writing. A chance meeting with Jewell Parker Rhodes afforded Tayari the opportunity to work toward a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing. With only a promise from Ms. Parker Rhodes, she drove two thousand miles to accept a scholarship to Arizona State University.
Leaving Atlanta, a novel based on her experiences living in Atlanta during the Atlanta Child Murders, was her Masters thesis
Silver Sparrow
Click to order via Amazon
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books (May 31, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1565129903
ISBN-13: 978-1565129900
Nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction
With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, 'My father, James Witherspoon, is a
bigamist,' author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's
deception, a family's complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the
middle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel
revolves around James Witherspoon's two families'the public one and the
secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship,
only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to
explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores
the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters'the father, the two
mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle'she also reveals the joy, as well as
the destruction, they brought to one another's lives.
At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best
writers'think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye'Jones portrays the fragility
of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand
attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their
mothers.
The
Untelling
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ISBN: 0446532460
Format: Hardcover, 336pp
Pub. Date: April 2005
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family
outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members
of this fractured family struggling to live with their own guilt'real and
imagined. At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned
marriage, with all its promise of a family of her own. But the reality of
infertility changes Aria's life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban
landscape around her. With prose that is both eloquent and unflinching, Jones
charts the emotional journey of her characters as they explore the painful
territory of truth and the healing landscape of forgiveness.
Leaving
Atlanta
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Amazon
ISBN: 0446528307
Format: Hardcover, 286pp
Pub. Date: July 2002
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Read an AALBC.com review by
Thumper
It's summer in Atlanta and black children are disappearing. By the time the heinous killing spree is over, 29 will be dead. This haunting menace provides the backdrop to the exquisitely evocative stories of three children fighting the everyday battles of adolescence: Tasha, who is coping with her parents' separation and the sweet pain of a first crush on a tender boy; Rodney, who struggles to make friends and wants only to please his abusive father; and Octavia, who faces down the popular crowd at school and must straddle the line between protected and protective daughter. Ultimately, these individual stories reveal the loss of innocence that accompanies the passage from childhood to adulthood.
Related Links
Tayari Jones Homepage
http://www.tayarijones.com
The un-tortured writer
by Richard Nilsen, The Arizona Republic (Jul. 7, 2003)
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/arts/articles/0707tayari07.html
