On Tuesday Oprah announced that her latest book club pick was:
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. During the CBS This Morning announcement Oprah expressed,
“It’s a love story that also has a huge layer of suspense,” she went on to say, “and it’s also so current and so really now that I could not put it down and have already passed it on to lots of my friends.”
In An American Marriage, newlyweds Celestial and Roy, professional African-Americans who live in Atlanta, find their lives destroyed when Roy is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and is sent to prison.
Tayari Jones is an accomplished Novelist, professor and graduate of Spelman College. In her early days at Spelman, she began writing where she studied under Pearl Cleage, (Spelman ’71) , who published her first story, “Eugenics” in Catalyst magazine. Tayari later graduated from Spelman, went on to the University of Iowa where she earned a masters’s degree. In 2002, she published her first book Leaving Atlanta. On February 6th, 2018, her newest book An American Marriage hit book stores everywhere.
An American Marriage is Tayari’s fourth novel. All of her novels are based in the South, where she grew up. When learning the news that her book would be selected for Oprah’s book club she said, “Every author fantasizes about being chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, I know I did,”
It is common knowledge that whenever Oprah selects a book for her book club, the book experiences mass success. In 2016, Oprah selected The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead which gave the novel national recognition. The book went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In a news release, the Oprah Winfrey Network also announced that Oprah’s production company Harpo Films, will produce a film adaptation of “An American Marriage.” It is no surprise to see a Spelman alumna like Tayari Jones experience such great success. We here at HBCU Buzz are proud of our Spelman sister for making terrific waves in literature and are very exciting to see what Oprah and her team create with the upcoming film.
