Book Review: Leaving Atlanta, by Tayari Jones. Grand Central. 2002.
Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage, published in 2018, has deservedly received a lot of attention – it is a compelling tale, beautifully told, weaving the issue of Black men in the criminal justice system into complex family relationships. But I want to tell you about an earlier book, which brings to life the terrible time when a killer was prowling Black Atlanta neighborhoods, his victims mostly young children.
Leaving Atlanta is told from the points of view of three fifth-grade children at Oglethorpe Elementary. Tasha’s family is middle class; her parents have recently separated. Rodney is also middle class, with a pretentious mother, a brutal father, a severe case of self-consciousness, and a crush on Octavia. Octavia and her single mother, who works the night shift at a bakery, are poor. They have a lovely relationship.
image: Always greener, by Meredith Brown
Their story is told in scene after scene of ordinary life, filled with family love, humor, and conflict. At the corner store, Rodney is a master candy-thief. He is aided by the shopkeeper’s prejudice: a boy who attends the AME church, who is in the youth group of the NAACP, who fears his father, would never steal.
A boy Tasha likes buys her M&Ms at the skating rink; it’s her first gift from a boy and she wants to keep it as a memento, but her Mama has a rule: no food in the bedroom.
When Octavia gets her first period her mother takes her out to dinner to celebrate. But first Octavia takes a bath, and her mother comes into the bathroom to have The Talk. “She was my mama; everything I got, she had seen before. Still, I didn’t really want to be having a conversation without my clothes on.” She tries to cover herself with soap. “Maybe I could work up enough bubbles to cover the good parts.”
image: ID 41408056 © Kakigori | Dreamstime.com
Tayari Jones seamlessly blends the terror that haunted Atlanta with the small sufferings of three fifth-grade outsiders. ‘Who will sit with me at lunch?’ ‘What if the popular girls make fun of me?’ ‘I’m gonna get a whipping.’
These children, and the families seen through their eyes, are so real, and so loveable, but over their ordinary lives the spectre of the child-snatchings hangs like a sword. There is a killer lurking somewhere in Atlanta, and every few weeks the TV news reports another Black child missing, another body found.
The parents forbid the kids to play outside, to answer the door. Tasha curses a boy who is bullying her – “I hope you die, I hope the man snatches you” – and blames herself when he is taken. One of the children we have come to know and care about disappears. Another is heartbroken when her mother sends her away to live in Baltimore with her father. “I’ll be missing my mama for the rest of my life.”
Tayari Jones brings news stories to life. The people we only read about in a brief paragraph in the paper become real in her novels. These are not merely ‘murder victims,’ or ‘Black families under siege.’ They are individuals with rich, complicated lives, children with hopes and worries and dreams. Though I first read this book fifteen years ago, I have never forgotten these children.