Leaving Atlanta

In telling a story that focuses on children’s intimate lives, Jones explores how literal kids are in their self-expression, and how they don’t understand why the adults around them aren’t as committed to saying what they mean. To children, language has power; therefore, a speaker should demonstrate integrity in his or her speech. As the children in this story, particularly Octavia, transition to adolescence, they find themselves embracing the hypocrisy of the adults around them—that is, adults admonishing dishonesty while also telling lies. 

Tasha is angry with her mother, for example, for not being clear about her separation from Tasha and DeShaun’s father, Charles. Tasha insists that living apart is not the same thing as separation. The latter connotes, for her, a clear rupture in the marriage. Because she’s a child, Tasha can’t pick up on the subtlety of living apart—a euphemism for separation. Here, Tasha exposes how adults can make things more confusing to children by not being explicitly truthful. 

Later, Tasha worries that she caused her friend Jashante’s death by wishing it upon him after a fight on the playground. Both Tasha and her classmate Rodney Green become preoccupied with the meaning of “asphyxiate,” a term that they hear repeatedly on newscasts, due to this being the killer’s preferred method of murdering boys.