2022-09-29
18 分钟You're listening to Book Exploder,
where authors break down a passage from their work to show us how they write.
I'm Rishi K. Shirwe.
And I'm Susan Orlean.
In this episode, Susan speaks to Tayari Jones,
who won the Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel An American Marriage.
She also won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work,
and An American Marriage was a selection for Oprah's Book Club.
Susan, how did you end up picking this book?
I was very attracted to the title as an American who is married.
I loved the plain spokenness of the title,
which I do think ends up being a very important part of the book.
Simply stating that this is an American marriage, even though as you read in the book,
it may not fit your idea of what a... conventional American marriage ends up looking like.
And that's a lot of what I think she's pushing us toward acknowledging and recognizing.
Yeah, the specific American marriage in the book is that of Celestial and Roy,
who are a black middle-class couple living in Atlanta.
And then their lives get torn apart when Roy is wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn't commit.
And the two of you discuss a passage where Celestial tells Roy that she's leaving him.
while he's still incarcerated.