In 2020, the monthly Book Club with the MFA discussions are centered on topical issues and themes universal to all: empowerment, artistic and creative excellence, and the push for equality for all. For October, we are reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and will join together on Zoom to explore the book, its characters, themes and more! This online event is free, but registration is required and will be limited to 50 participants.

An intimate look at three lives, all placed in jeopardy through the wrongful incarceration of one man, An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, linking both the past and present in a truly contemporary look at African American lives.

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career when they are ripped apart by Roy’s wrongful conviction of a crime, and his sentence of 12 years in prison.

As Roy’s time in prison passes, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to rebuild his life and return to his relationship with Celeste. This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future. Much like the Odyssey, upon which the novel is based, the characters in An American Marriage are bound to a journey of resilience and survival.

About the author:  New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016.

Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

During our temporary closure, so many of you have asked how you can help your Museum. Even though we have reopened, the impact of the months of closure is great. Here are a few ways you can support the MFA today:

• Become a member or gift a membership
• Renew your membership
• Make a charitable gift of any size so that we can continue arts education and conservation while we were temporarily closed and when we reopen
• Shop at our award-winning store online
• Shop online with Amazon Smile (choose Museum of Fine Arts Of St Petersburg Florida Inc, and a percent of your purchases will be donated to the MFA)