“A love story…Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy…Jones’ skill for wry understatement never wavers.” O, The Oprah Magazine
Description
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 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 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.
Praise
“A love story…Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy…Jones’ skill for wry understatement never wavers.” O, The Oprah Magazine
“Charting a vast emotional unknown is Tayari Jones’ compelling third novel, Silver Sparrow, in which a teenage girl’s coming of age in 1990s Atlanta is shadowed by her dawning understanding of a corrosive secret—her father’s second family.” Vogue
“Tayari Jones’s immensely pleasurable new novel pulls off a minor miracle…Subtly exploring the power of labels…Jones crafts an affecting tale about things, big and small, we forfeit to forge a family. There are no winners in this empathetic and provocative story, only survivors.” More
“Absorbing…Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when.” Washington Post
“[Jones] is fast defining middle-class black Atlanta the way Cheever did Westchester.” Village Voice
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | May 23, 2011 |
| Release Date | May 24, 2011 |
| Release Date Machine | 1306195200 |
| Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
| Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
| Categories | Literature & Fiction, African American, Fiction - All, Fiction - Adult |
Author Bio
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Silver Sparrow, Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and An American Marriage, a New York TImes bestseller. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, the Believer, the New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an associate professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.
Narrator Bio
Rosalyn Coleman Williams is the director of the award-winning short film Allergic to Nuts. She is a 2003 Fox Fellow Award winner and was nominated for a 2006 Barrymore Award for Best Actress for her performance in Intimate Apparel at the Philadelphia Theater Company. Her film credits include Vanilla Sky, Our Song, and Music of the Heart. Rosalyn is a member of New York Women in Film and Television, the East Coast Writers Collective, and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio.
Heather Alicia Simms is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, finalist for an Audie Award, and an actress. Her filmography includes Broken Flowers, Flutter Kick, Shock Act, Kingscounty, Head of State, Third Watch, and others. She also provided voice acting for the video game Red Dead Revolver.
Overview
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 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 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.
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