Silver Sparrow
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
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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Level 4.9, 13 Points
Tayari Jones. (2011). Silver Sparrow. Unabridged Blackstone Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Tayari Jones. 2011. Silver Sparrow. Blackstone Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Tayari Jones, Silver Sparrow. Blackstone Publishing, 2011.
MLA Citation (style guide)Tayari Jones. Silver Sparrow. Unabridged Blackstone Publishing, 2011.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 2 | 2 |
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New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including An American Marriage, Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. A winner of numerous literary awards, she is a professor of creative writing at Emory University.
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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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- content: Rosalyn Williams and Heather Simms portray two lives that converge in a middle-class Atlanta neighborhood in the 1980s. Each narrator portrays both of Jones's compelling lead characters--two half-sisters, only one of whom is aware of the other's existence. As Dana and Chaurisse's lead their separate lives, the destructiveness of strongly guarded secrets becomes palpable in their hurt and strident voices. Both narrators also deftly perform the difficult task of speaking with a stutter while portraying the girls' father, James, a secret bigamist. Eventually, the half-sisters individually set out on a ruinous trajectory to find the love they believe they lack in their broken families. As they come together, their paths lead to shattering revelations--and to a predictable but moving conclusion. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
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February 7, 2011
A coming-of-age story of sorts, Jones's melodramatic latest (after The Untelling) chronicles the not-quite-parallel lives of Dana Lynn Yarboro and Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon in 1980s Atlanta. Both girls—born four months apart—are the daughters of James Witherspoon, a secret bigamist, but only Dana and her mother, Gwen, are aware of his double life. This, Dana surmises, confers "one peculiar advantage" to her and Gwen over James's other family, with whom he lives full time, though such knowledge is small comfort in the face of all their disadvantages. Perpetually feeling second best, 15-year-old Dana takes up with an older boy whose treatment of her only confirms her worst expectations about men. Meanwhile, Chaurisse enjoys the easy, uncomplicated comforts of family, and though James has done his utmost to ensure his daughters' paths never cross, the girls, of course, meet, and their friendship sets their worlds toward inevitable (and predictable) collision. Set on its forced trajectory, the novel piles revelation on revelation, growing increasingly histrionic and less believable. For all its concern with the mysteries of the human heart, the book has little to say about the vagaries of what motivates us to love and lie and betray.
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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...
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