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Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Tayari Jones. The American writer and professor, 55, is the author of five novels, including An American Marriage, which won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her latest novel is Kin.
RELIGION
Five months before An American Marriage came out, you got a call from Oprah Winfrey, telling you she was picking it for her book club. Did that feel like some kind of spiritual experience? A divine intervention? You know what? No. See, before An American Marriage, my novel Silver Sparrow came out and I was told, “Your career is done; you’re not popular.” My publisher kicked me to the kerb. Then I went to this writers’ conference, and I was ashamed as I was out of print and wouldn’t have any books to sign. Everyone there was so famous and I was this unheard-of person.
Oh, Tayari … Then a woman walked up to me and said, “I’ve heard what happened to you.” I was so embarrassed that a stranger knew this about me, but then she said, “I can help you.” She took me by the hand, led me through the crowd and put my hand in the hand of another publisher. But I knew this publisher had already rejected me, so I wanted to leave. Then the publisher said, “Well, before you go, tell me: how is it that you and Judy know each other?” And I said, “I don’t know anybody named Judy.” She says, “No, I mean [fellow American writer] Judy Blume, who just introduced us.”
No way! It was as though my nerdy childhood had come to rescue me in my moment of need. That felt like divine intervention. And everything was better within 48 hours.
DEATH
Have you ever had a near-death experience? Yes! When I was 12 years old, my parents were having some African-American, back-to-the-motherland-type fantasy situation, so there I was, being taken to Nigeria against my will. While I was there, I caught malaria.
Oh, no … There was a coup the same day, so nobody could take me to a doctor. I was so delirious, so sick and so mad. My mother was telling me how much she loved me and though I was so weak, I focused so I could face the wall and not have to look at her. [Laughs] She just flipped me back over.
I love that your response was anger at your mother. I wanted her to feel bad about this for the rest of her life. But they got me medicine and I lived. Oh, there was another time I almost died …
You’ve had multiple near-death experiences? [Laughs and nods] When I was about 19, I went to college in a sketchy neighbourhood in Atlanta, Georgia. I was with a friend – a guy named Jeff – who was calling someone to let me into my room because I’d missed curfew and the door was locked. So I was in the car, watching Jeff use the payphone, when two guys came up to him, then they all started walking over to me. One guy came to the car and I thought he was trying to pick me up because I was cute. Instead, he put this gun to my head and said, “Give me your purse.” He’d already tried to rob Jeff – who had no money – so he was mad. And I said, “I need to tell you, I do not have any cash, but I do have several major credit cards.” And he said, “Oh, you trying to be funny?” Then he pulled the trigger.
What?! But the gun made a dull click. It didn’t happen. Then the other robber got mad because I think they had agreed not to kill anybody, and they started tussling. Jeff jumps in the car and says, “Drive!” So I pull off and we’re laughing hysterically. Then we see a policeman, wave him over and tell him what’s happened. It was a white policeman. Jeff and I are black, and the people who were trying to kill us are black. The policeman says, “This is just a shame. Your parents realised you need to have an education to get ahead in life, but the rest of them think they can just rob and steal for a living …”
Wow. The cop is now giving you a racist lecture? So Jeff and I said, “Actually, there are a lot of reasons why people turn to crime! There are a lot of systemic factors, like institutionalised racism.” When the police officer asked us for a description of the person, we lied.
“Well actually, he looked a lot like you, officer.” Yeah! [Laughs] Someone tried to legitimately kill me and I’m trying to save him from systemic injustice.
MONEY
In 2018, An American Marriage was selected for Oprah’s Book Club; it won the Women’s Prize the year after. How much did this change your financial reality? It was quite swift. I’d been living in an old lady’s brownstone [townhouse] in Brooklyn for four years. The Jenkins family lived downstairs and I would walk up through their house and go into my little apartment upstairs …
You were the creature in the attic. Yes. I felt proud of it, but my kitchen was so small I could touch both walls simultaneously. Now I have an elevator in my house. But I don’t have extravagant tastes: the man who lived in it before was in a wheelchair.
Did you buy yourself something special to celebrate getting picked by Oprah? Forget Oprah. All the things people think were my big moment weren’t.
Tell me about the actual big moment. After I wrote Silver Sparrow, I applied for a fellowship at the Guggenheim Foundation. I didn’t receive it and I was so sad; I’d worked so hard on the application. Then I went to the mailbox and there was a letter in there with a little window. It was a royalty check. I’d never received one before. It was for roughly the same amount as a Guggenheim Fellowship. And I thought, “I am my own Guggenheim!”
Tayari Jones will appear at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 21.
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