Gale - A Study Guide for Tayari Joness Silver Sparrow

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Tayari Jones

2011

Tayari Jones's novel Silver Sparrow, published in 2011, tells the story of a bigamist's two families: his first wife and daughter, who are not aware that they have been deceived, and his second wife and daughter, who know their place as a secret family to a twice-married man. Narrated by his daughters, Chaurisse and Dana, the story of James's life is in many ways remarkable in its ordinariness: he is neither handsome nor wealthy and suffers from a stutter. Yet the four women whose lives his actions have tied together forever are as complex as they are uniqueeach with their own philosophy regarding life and love. As second daughter Dana begins to form a bond with first daughter Chaurisse, the separation between the two families begins to erode, hurtling the women toward a confrontation as disastrous as it is inevitable. Love, marriage, and loyalty live in the heart of this beautifully written tale of a great American taboo.

Jones was born on November 30, 1970, in Atlanta, Georgia. Raised in southwestern Atlanta, Jones lived for a year in Nigeria with her family after her father, a professor at Clark Atlanta University, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. She attended Spelman College, where she first discovered a passion for fiction after the college president, Johnetta Cole, encouraged her to pursue writing as a career. In 1991, she earned her bachelor's degree in English from Spelman. She went on to earn her master's degree in English from the University of Iowa and her master of fine arts degree in fiction from Arizona State University in 2000. She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Chteau du Lavigny, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, as well as a United States Artist Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship.

Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, was published in 2002. It was named novel of the year by Atlanta magazine and was awarded the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Untelling, was published in 2005. The Untelling was awarded the Lillian Smith Book Award. Silver Sparrow is Jones's third novel, published in 2011 to wide critical praise. The novel was added to the Big Read Library of the National Endowment for the Arts in 2016. Jones's work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, the New York Times, Callaloo, Tin House, Catalyst, Gumbo, Figdust, the Believer, 64, Langston Hughes Review, Sou'wester, and Proverbs for the People. She is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. As of 2017, she is an associate professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Silver Sparrow begins with Dana explaining that her father is a bigamist with two daughters by two different wives. First, he married Laverne, with whom he has a daughter, Chaurisse. Then he married Gwendolyn, Dana's mother. Gwendolyn and Dana are his secret family, andunlike Laverne and Chaurissethey know about James's bigamy. Dana calls her father James, while Chaurisse calls him Daddy. She and her mother spy on Laverne and Chaurisse occasionally, jealous of their happy, ignorant lives.

Gwen met James when she was twenty years old, working at a gift-wrapping counter in a department store in 1968. He was buying a carving knife for his wife for their anniversary. Gwen laughed at the gift but then felt bad after James walked away. He returned with the knife and a second giftperfumefor Gwen. She was flattered and hoped he would return, but he did not reappear until three months later. He asked her out for coffee, and she accepted. Gwen was living with a friend, Willie Mae, who dated married men almost exclusively, and she reassured Gwen that she was not doing anything wrong.

James owns his own chauffeur business. He is a short man with very thick glasses and a stutter that gets worse when he is upset. He forbids Dana and Gwen from interacting with his other family. As a result, Dana cannot go to a Saturday science academy program because Chaurisse is going. To apologize, James brings Dana a fur coat he won playing cards. Dana attends a math-and-science magnet high school, while Chaurisse goes to a performance art school for the flute. Dana wants a boyfriend but does not trust the boys she meets to be loyal to her. After she sabotages her boyfriend's science fair project, Dana is selected to represent her school at the fair instead. At the fair, she meets Chaurisse for the first time. They are both wearing the same fur coat.