Conservative estimates place the number of those in America with more than one spouse as up to 100,000, but the figure is much higher. Bigamy, which is outlawed in 50 states, takes place in secret, with only a handful of people knowing about it. ‘It’s a shame that there isn’t a true name for a woman like my mother Gwendolyn,’ says Dana Lynn Yarboro, the ‘other’ daughter of her father’s ‘other’ wife, in Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow, a novel that examines the multitudinous effects of bigamy — how it can extend families, break them, confuse identity and damage lives.
‘There are other terms I know,’ Dana continues.‘When she is tipsy, angry or sad, Mother uses them to describe herself: concubine, whore, mistress, consort.’ Dana herself, the narrator of the first half of this book, is known as the ‘secret’ daughter or ‘outside child’.
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