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  • Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones book cover
  • Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones book cover
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Leaving Atlanta

by Tayari Jones

Childhood under the shadow of fear

$16.47 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Author recognition

    Essence praise for Tayari Jones

    Essence describes Tayari Jones as one of the most important voices of her generation.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Childhood under the shadow of fear

Set in Atlanta at the end of a summer marked by the disappearance and murder of African-American children, the novel centers on fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison. Returning to school means navigating ordinary childhood challenges alongside safety lessons, frightened parents, and a community living with constant fear. The three children’s experiences bring the story’s coming-of-age focus into close contact with events beyond their control: small victories and hurts take place against a crisis that changes how childhood is lived. The book frames growing up as something shaped both by daily school life and by the wider dangers pressing in on the children.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in coming-of-age fiction centered on fifth-grade children.
  • Readers seeking fiction set amid a community crisis in Atlanta.
  • Readers interested in stories about childhood, family fear, and outside forces shaping young lives.

Themes

Coming of ageChildhood and vulnerabilityFear and community crisisThe pressures shaping young lives

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

From the author of the Oprah's Book Club Selection An American Marriage, here is a beautifully evocative novel that proves why Tayari Jones is "one of the most important voices of her generation" (Essence). It was the end of summer, a summer during the two-year nightmare in which Atlanta's African-American children were vanishing and twenty-nine would be found murdered by 1982. Here fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison will discover back-to-school means facing everyday challenges in a new world of safety lessons, terrified parents, and constant fear.

The moving story of their struggle to grow up-and survive- shimmers with the piercing, ineffable quality of childhood, as it captures all the hurts and little wins, the all-too-sudden changes, and the merciless, outside forces that can sweep the young into adulthood and forever shape their lives.

PRAISE FOR TAYARI JONES
"Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear." -- Michael Chabon

"Tayari Jones has emerged as one of the most important voices of her generation." -- Essence

"One of America's finest writers." -- Nylon.com

"Tayari Jones is a wonderful storyteller." -- Ploughshares
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