A review by plumjam
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

4.0

I give this book points just for the title and how significant it is considering the story. Roy and Celestial are two Black Americans, recently married and doing well for themselves. That is until Roy is wrongfully convicted for the rape of a white woman. Even someone like Roy, who did everything in his power to make something honorable of himself and succeed despite his disadvantages, lost everything unfairly. The book goes through the perspectives of different friends and family along with Celestial and Roy and it really shows how the imprisonment of a single person significantly affects multiple people. The book also does a good job of demonstrating how our prison system is more likely to create criminals than it is to rehabilitate them. I liked what the book did with Celestial, how she struggled against the expectation to put her life on hold for a man in prison. How she, like Roy, worked hard to try not to fall on such a path and still did to no fault of her own. There were parts in the middle that meandered a bit but the climax was incredible. It was such a damning and memorable scene. This book might be a little slow for some, but I’d highly recommend it.