Reading: Daughters & Mothers

This novel was another book club pick, and although it’s almost three times as long as the previous one, I tore through it in half the time. Tayari Jones’ prose forges compelling, realistic characters on a heartbreaking journey toward love in its many forms. The narrative in Silver Sparrow unfolds through the eyes of two teenage girls—Dana and Chaurisse—who have much more in common than they realize. Beyond sharing (unbeknownst to Chaurisse), a father, they also share the real and consuming desire to be seen. This is not a need for attention, but a need to be understood and loved in a way that recognizes who they are as people. A universal need. Jones explores this through the relationships the girls have with their mothers (Gwen and Dana, Laverne and Chaurisse) vastly different women, each with an engrossing tale of her own.

The reader is further introduced to the essential distinctions between the women, in their relationships with James, who they are both married to, although only Gwen is aware of the man’s infidelity. The novel begins with the story of how Gwen and James became a couple, even though he was already married,

“This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rolled toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hill. Mother had no hand in this, only heart.” Page 27

It paints their relationship as a given, an inevitable fate. Jones’ comparison of love as a boulder absolves both parties from culpability. The language she has chosen allows the reader to accept this unorthodox arrangement and even view it as something romantic, predetermined by the stars—“destined.”

In contrast, when describing Laverne and James, Jones employs a fatalistic approach. This paragraph takes place after their shotgun wedding, during Laverne’s first night sleeping next to her new husband, pregnant, at 14 years-old.

“Mama lay in the dark. She had been wearing her girdle too long and her feet were starting to tingle. She longed for her mother. She had never slept anywhere but her own home. She pressed her hands to her abdomen. She knew that sometimes women died while having babies, and she thought that if she were lucky, this is what would happen to her.” Page 179

An image of a constricting girdle, pairs well with the suffocating bind of Laverne’s marital situation. The repetition of she in increasingly dire circumstances pushes the reader deeper into her desperation.

This duality of experience between the two women is further highlighted since the narration for Gwen and Laverne’s stories is done by Dana and Chaurisse, respectively. Rather than create distance through a third person narrator, Jones personalized the stories even more by filtering them through the daughters. This is an excellent use of back-story as a device to learn more about the main characters. Their perspectives on these tales reveal more about who they are. Dana: searching for love in terms of absolutes, and Chaurisse: dealing with tragedy cool-headedly.

Another device used with great effect is the sense of smell. The author plants memories, habits, characteristics, and vivid connections through the use of repeating scents.

“I have since read in self-help books that people who are not accustomed to affection don’t know how to receive it…You don’t need a dress rehearsal to know how to lay your head on your father’s shoulder, to inhale his tobacco scent. It takes no practice to know how to be someone’s daughter.” Page 125

“I couldn’t escape the odor of her because she smelled just like me and just like my mother and my father and this house. Anaïs Anaïs, White Shoulders, menthol cigarettes. This is what made up the air of our lives, and theirs, too.” Page 317

The first quote, from Dana’s point of view, uses the familiarity of scent to underscore an emotional moment. In choosing a concrete reference, Jones brings the reader into the scene, tethering, in reality, an otherwise abstract concept. The second quote, from Chaurisse’s point of view, cements Dana’s position as the protagonist who drives the plot. Even though the book is split into two perspectives, and employs two narrators, Dana looms epic in both sections.

Silver Sparrow tackles, head-on, tough truths, and relationships. The author could have easily resigned to stereotypes of women who cheat, women who get cheated on, and the daughters those women would raise. Instead, the final result is a studied observation of how layered people’s motives and lives often are. By examining the pain from two angles, Dana and Chaurisse, mirrored images emerge that resonate long after the page has been turned and the book read.