Summary
She grew up in Atlanta in a time of terror. By the time she finished fifth grade, more than 20 black children were murdered, including two of her schoolmates.
But Tayari Jones says that instead of losing her childhood, she gained a keen appreciation of the class divisions - especially within black Atlanta - that helped to keep her safe. She understood the profound generation gap within black families that caused the murders to inflict more hurt and terror on her parents' generation than on her own. And she recognized the sheer tenaciousness of childhood.See the full content of this document
Extract
Doomed Classes of Atlanta
"I knew I wanted to write something about this time," said Jones, now 33. "I really just wanted to make a record of what happened to us as a generation."
That record, "Leaving Atlanta," is a poignant, sometimes funny, always honest portrayal of the lives of three fifth-graders at the Oglethorpe Elementary School in 1979. The book won this year's legacy award for debut fiction from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. It was the subject of The Record Book Club's recent discussion....See the full content of this document
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